The Siberia Saga
by Brasc
Summary: It had been a long day at university for Anatoly Terentyev, but one mishap during his ride home will change his life in ways he couldn't have imagined...
1. A Chance Encounter

_October 1999_

_Irkutsk, Russia_

The streetlight flickered fitfully for a moment, and Anatoly Terentyev glanced up at it momentarily, his slanted eyes narrowing against the glare. He moved the strap of his bag more securely over his shoulder and picked up his pace, moving forward into the puddle of light cast down from the next streetlight. His shoes scuffed through the accumulated dirt on the sidewalk, and the rundown wood buildings on either side of the street did nothing to help lighten his mood. The trees seemed to loom menacingly over the sidewalk, and the garish yellow billboard with its blue and red Cyrillic lettering seemed a harsh, taunting presence.

"Damn it, Anatoly," he muttered to himself, "why'd you have to fall asleep on the tram?" But he already knew the answer to that. It had been a long day in classes at the university, and he'd been exhausted when he had finally climbed aboard the tram for the ride back to the Soviet-era tenement that his apartment was in. He was usually alert on those rides - some unsavory types thought that all the students who went to Irkutsk State University were foreigners with money - but he had gradually drifted off until he'd awakened far past his stop, and was now definitely in the wrong part of town.

"Maybe I _should_ have gotten a cab," he muttered, glancing around briefly as he walked quickly down the street. He had been reluctant to part with the rubles needed for the fare, living as he did on a student's budget. But the longer he found himself walking through this neighborhood, the better an idea it seemed. As he looked around, Anatoly realized that it wasn't as workable an idea as it had once been either. Payphones were few and far between, and those he did see didn't seem to be in working order. "If only I had one of those cellular phones," he sighed.

Anatoly felt alarm tingling along his spine as he caught a glimpse of some figures moving through the darkness behind him. Sparing a longer glance at them out of the corner of his eye, he picked up his pace. The tingling turned into a cold feeling along his skin as he noticed the figures starting to move after him. He swallowed hard through a throat gone tight with fear, turning his head forward again and ducking it down slightly between hunched shoulders as he kept walking as fast as possible, trying to avoid any sort of confrontation.

He stopped abruptly as someone stepped out of the darkness to directly block his path on the sidewalk. Anatoly stared at the Russian man who glared at him from cold dark eyes, his Slavic face emotionless as he pulled a Makarov pistol from the pocket of his Red Army overcoat and let it rest in his hand at his side.

"Give me your bag," the Russian said, his tone as dead as his expression. His eyes flicked around the street as he spoke, his hand tightening and untightening on the grip of the Makarov.

"Listen, I don't want any trouble," Anatoly began, taking a reflexive step back, his swarthy features paled. "I'm a Buryat, not a foreigner. I don't have--"

He stopped as the Russian thug abruptly raised the pistol and pointed it straight into his face. "Give me your damn bag!" he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth, his eyes suddenly wild as they stared directly into his over the looming barrel of the gun.

Anatoly felt his heart stop as his eyes looked into the dark pit of the barrel, his hands held up in front of him. He heard low laughs and talking behind him as the people that had been following him in the shadows moved up, blocking off any chance of escape. His mouth went dry. "I..." he began, voice quavering, then trailed off as he heard louder laughs behind him.

"Hey, are you _scared_, student boy?" he heard a voice taunt from behind him. The remark produced more cruel laughter, and even the corner of the thug's mouth tugged up in a smirk. Anatoly felt his heart sink, realizing there was no way out of this, and that the thugs were in a... playful mood.

A sharp whistling sound behind the thug with the Makarov had him looking back over his shoulder reflexively, and Anatoly blinked, finding himself peering into the darkness as well. There was nobody there that could have whistled, and it didn't look like there was anything that could have made the sound either. "What was that?" one of the thugs said harshly behind him.

The next thing Anatoly knew, the air was filled with an unearthly howling scream. The thug with the pistol spun his head back around just in time to see the Makarov knocked out of his hand by the edge of a strange-looking axe that flashed through the low light thrown up by the edge of the light pool created by a streetlight, the blade hacking partway through the short barrel as the gun fell from suddenly numbed fingers. The thug stepped backwards away from his attacker, eyes wide as he cradled his hand and stared at the apparition with glowing red eyes attacking him.

Anatoly, for his part, wasn't sure exactly what he was seeing as the large figure stepped after the thug, the one-bladed axe with a spike on the opposite side raised at the ready in one hand. The light wasn't strong enough for him to see his rescuer clearly, but he could've sworn that it had dropped down from the _air_ when it knocked the gun out the Russian's hand. That, and the silhouette was... strange, to say the least. What most caught his attention were the two shapes flared out from its back, looking almost like... wings?

"_Bozhemoi_," the Russian thug gasped, his eyes looking from the two glowing red slits that glared at him to the weird axe. With strength borne of desperation, he tried to grab the wrist of the hand holding the axe with one hand while swinging a fist at the thing's face with the other. A snarl erupted from the thing, and it charged forward to slam into him bodily, knocking him back a few paces before it crouched and a slithering shape swept along the ground and pulled his feet out from under him. He fell roughly to the ground, the wind knocked out of his chest, and shrieked in terror as the axe came flashing down towards his face, clenching his eyes shut as he heard a metallic _shoonk_. He opened his eyes slowly to see the axe blade driven into the sidewalk near his ear and the red eyes filling his vision above him. The thug gave one last frightened croak before fainting dead away.

Anatoly backed away from the scene in front of him, only to tangle his own feet against each other and fall backwards to the sidewalk. He blinked as he saw another of the weird silhouettes in the midst of the thugs behind him, eyes glowing white as a hand snatched the front of one thug's coat and lifted him into the air effortlessly, then threw into another one of the thugs, sending them both sprawling. The other three thugs started to advance towards the thing's back, but then three objects _ffffwipped_ through the air. One thug yelled out as one of his legs gave out from under him, clenching his hands to the front of his thigh as he fell to the ground. A second had his breath _huff_ out explosively as he doubled over in pain, clutching his stomach. The third fell over like a puppet with its strings cut as an object hit his skull with a light _thock_, and Anatoly was able to see an arrow rebound from the thug's head.

"He'll feel that one tomorrow," a voice coming from overhead said wryly.

Anatoly looked up and felt his jaw sag open in shock. Flying overhead was a lithe man-shaped... _something_, held aloft by two bat-like wings. It had two triangle shaped ears on top of its head and a face that seemed to come to a point to a nose wreathed with small whiskers. Its eyes, though, looked human and held amusement as it landed its feet on top of a streetlight and crouched there, a slithering tail hanging down on the other side, while its hand held what was unmistakably some sort of bow.

"Wha--?!" Anatoly blinked and looked back over his shoulder to see the figure there finish picking up the three arrows with blunt arrowheads that had hit the thugs from the ground, then straightened and looked over his shoulder at the student lying on the ground, folding his wings around himself as he held the arrows in a four fingered clawed hand. His head was that of a tiger, with longer triangular ears and orange and white fur with black stripes. His human-like eyes were more grim as he studied the young man staring up at him.

A sigh sounded in front of him, and Anatoly turned to look at the figure with the strange axe as it stepped toward him into the light, hanging the axe from a belt at its... at _her_ waist. She was bird-like, with fine brown feathers at her neck and face with with a orangeish-yellow beak whose top portion ended in a slight downward curve over the edge of the bottom part. Her eyes seemed to hold a sort of infinite weariness as she looked down at the astonished Anatoly. She wore a long hide jacket with fur trimming at the edges that accentuated a female form; it came down to midthigh with a leather belt tied about the waist. Below the edge were leather pants with patterns worked into the smooth leather along the front while braided leather held the sides of the legs; they ended at her ankles just above large three-toed feet that tapered upward to a rear toe. She had a slithery tail like the others that swished from side to side as she stepped forward. Another look around showed that the other two wore similar outfits.

Anatoly and the three creatures stared at each other for a while, then the one that looked like a tiger turned away, saying, "Let's get going." He walked to the edge of a house and jumped up, catching onto the edge and pulling himself up until his feet landed on the roof. His wings flared out with a leathery snap, then he jumped off and began gliding away. The furry one on the streetlight - whom Anatoly realized looked like a sable - unstrung his bow and slipped it into a leather carrying case hanging from his back before snapping his wings out and following.

As the bird-like female stepped towards another house, Anatoly scrambled to his feet. "Wait!"

She paused and stood with her back to him a moment before turning her head to look at him, a brow quirked in question.

"Uh..." Anatoly hesitated, unsure of just what to say at first. Finally, he straightened and nodded to her. "_Spasebo_," he said, "Thank you."

The bird woman blinked, seemingly taken aback, then nodded to him a moment before jumping up and pulling herself up to the roof. She snapped her wings out and paused at the edge of the roof, looking down at Anatoly for a moment. She smiled as she leaped off and glided after her two comrades. Anatoly turned to watch her go, three winged shapes flying off into the distance.

A groan soon brought his attention back to earth, coming from one of the thugs on the ground. Suddenly realizing that he was alone amongst them, Anatoly quickly grabbed his bag from the ground and hurried away, glancing over his shoulder at the six thugs sprawled on the small Irkutsk street.

"What were they?" he wondered aloud as he hurried off. There was something vaguely familiar about them, as if he'd heard about them from somewhere else... and he was going to find out where.

***

"Hey! Wait up!"

Anatoly turned to see a girl about his own age with brown hair and green eyes hurry towards him, waving one hand while the other held her schoolbag's strap at her shoulder. He paused long enough for her to catch up with him, then started walking alongside her.

"Hi Nadia," he said. "What's up?"

Nadia Shalenko, an ethnic Ukrainian girl, mock glowered at him. "What's up? What's up? I'll show you what's up." She elbowed him hard enough to make him stagger sideways a couple steps. Anatoly smiled and shoved her shoulder back, and she laughed and settled down to continue walking alongside him. The two of them had been unlikely friends for a few semesters, and they usually hung out or went clubbing together when school wasn't dominating their lives. Which meant, of course, not very often.

"So where are you headed?" Nadia asked, looking over at him curiously. "I thought you didn't have any classes today."

Anatoly shrugged. "I thought I would head over to the library, get some extra studying done." Which was true enough, though the subject he was planning to study had to do with more _recent_ developments.

"_Extra_ studying? You mean they don't give you enough work to do as it is?" Nadia asked, eyes wide. She smirked suddenly and narrowed her eyes. "Hold on, if you have that much free time, then why aren't we hitting the town, huh? Maybe head over to Club 01?"

Anatoly chuckled and shook his head. Nadia was an incorrigible clubber, and he'd been forced to practically drag her home more than once after a little too much dancing and vodka. "Maybe it's because _you_ have classes today," he replied, smiling smugly. He really wanted to get to the library today, and the retort had the added bonus of being nothing but the truth.

Nadia winced and waved a hand in surrender. "Yeah, you're right. You really know how to bring a girl down, don't you?" She punched him playfully in the arm and headed off, smiling again. "Okay, I'll see you around then."

"See you, Nadia," he replied, and watched her hurry off towards her next class. He sighed when she fell out of sight and rubbed his arm absently, the corner of his mouth quirked up. "I wonder if I can sue her for abuse," he murmured to himself, then laughed quietly.

Before long the university library loomed ahead of him and he hurried to the doors leading into the neoclassical building. He quickly made his way to the computers and signed himself in for some internet time, then sourly handed over the rubles necessary to reserve it. That was the only reason he didn't make as much use of the internet as he could, and one of his long term dreams was to get his own personal computer.

"Why don't I wish for a _dacha_ and a Mercedes while I'm at it," Anatoly muttered to himself as he slid into the computer chair.

He paused in thought, then began typing away at the keyboard, typing in some of the defining characteristics of the creatures he'd seen the night before. He frowned when some websites about wildlife with tenuous connections to his search parameters came up. "Okay," he mumbled to himself, "Let's try the English sites then." He began retyping the search parameters in the Latin alphabet as opposed to his native Cyrillic.

Anatoly blinked as the search results flooded onto the screen. Bemused, he scanned through them until he came to a website for some American news show called NightWatch. The brief description below the link had highlighted most of his search terms, but there was one word that seized his attention.

Gargoyles.

As he clicked on the link and read through the story, he suddenly realized why they had seemed so familiar. The international news media had trumpeted the reports out of New York City a few years ago about real, living gargoyles which had, up to then, seemed nothing but the latest local urban legend. There were two sides to the story, with one that said they were murderous demons that stalked New Yorkers during the night, while the other said they were a fully intelligent race that protected the citizens of Manhattan. Considering his own experience, Anatoly knew which side he himself was leaning towards.

"What are they doing in Irkutsk, though?" He frowned and as he clicked through the confirmed pictures of gargoyles on the website, he soon had his answer. The New York gargoyles in the pictures - the best ones coming from their sighting at St. Damien's Cathedral - looked nothing like the ones he'd seen last night. Oh, there were the wings and tails, but these mostly had features that were more human than the animal-like ones he'd seen.

Anatoly frowned as he pondered what it could mean. "Perhaps... perhaps it means that these are _different_ gargoyles," he said softly to himself. "Another group of them?" He scribbled the thought down on his writing pad, then tapped the pen thoughtfully against his bottom lip. Two different groups of them meant that there could be an entire _race_ of them. It was a daunting prospect.

He sat back in the chair and contemplated the possibility, absently doodling on the pad of paper on the table next to the keyboard. When he finally refocused back to reality, he noticed that he had been sketching the faces of a sable, a tiger, and a bird, all of them with human eyes. Surprised, Anatoly spent a few moments to stare at the images, resting his cheek against a fist.

Images ran through his mind - of an axe blade flashing through the low light the slice into a Makarov pistol that had been pointed at his face, a clawed hand grabbing the coat of one of the thugs that made the life of so many Russians miserable and throwing him into his partner, of three arrows hitting three other criminals without actually killing them, and the wry humor of the sable gargoyle as it perched on top of the streetlight.

"I have to see them again." The words left his mouth seemingly on their own, and Anatoly blinked as he thought them over. Finally, he smiled. "Yeah, I guess I do," he remarked, as if answering himself. "But how?"

He began typing in Cyrillic again, this time using the term gargoyles. He frowned as the most he came upon was the NATO designation of a Russian Surface-to-Air missile system, a stone carving at the University of Toronto, and images of various decorative gargoyles in places like Paris and Prague. Anatoly rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers, lost in thought. "What am I missing?"

Pursing his lips at a sudden thought, he turned his attention back to the keyboard and began looking up local legends. A smile slowly formed as he finally came across a Russian folk belief about creatures known as leshie, supposedly woodland spirits that herdsmen and hunters could make pacts with for protection of their pastures. One tale of a leshii told of a soldier appearing at midnight and eventually revealing that he had a long black tail and wings, and by all accounts they were associated with the animals of the forest.

"Hmm... yeah, these leshie sound a bit like the gargoyles from last night," he murmured to himself, and scribbled more notes down on his pad. "Let's see if I can find out some more about them."

Anatoly began typing again, this time searching specifically for the leshie. He came across some encyclopedia articles about them, but along with them were several conspiracy websites about UFOs, government conspiracies, and secret societies. But on one of them he finally happened upon local reports of leshie sightings on Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal.

He blinked in surprise. "Lake Baikal?" That was relatively close to Irkutsk; tourists who came to the city usually used it as a base for bus trips to Lake Baikal.

"Bus trip," he sighed, then smiled. "Oh well. I guess I'm due for a vacation anyway."

***

All along the bus ride to the MRS on the shore of Lake Baikal and the short ride on the ferry to Olkhon Island, Anatoly wondered if he was insane for doing this. He had a tight enough budget as it was without throwing money away on some wild goose chase to some tourist trap looking for mythological forest spirits that may or may not have something to do with some gargoyles he'd seen briefly one night. But each time he would look back upon the pad of paper that had the sketches he'd kept drawing and the various notes he had taken, and rediscover that solid determination that remained inside of him.

A short while later, he stepped out of the guesthouse in the island's main village Khuzhir and frowned as he took in the rapidly darkening sky. "I don't know if I should be wandering around this place after dark, but I don't want to waste too much time before I start looking around," he remarked to himself. He stood there a few moments in indecision, then shrugged as he made his way over to the bicycle he'd rented from the owner of the guesthouse.

"I can always sleep when I get back home," he muttered to himself, shaking his head.

He climbed aboard the bike and, after making sure the straps of his backpack were secure on his shoulders, started pedaling along the road. Anatoly took in the sights of the taiga forests that dominated most of the island, as well as the endless sweeps of it on the mainland of Siberia, as well as the expanse of Lake Baikal itself and the sight of the Altai Mountains to the south. They made for a breathtaking sight, and he decided he could see why tourists from across Russia and the world decided to visit this place.

He continued riding long after night fell, looking to the sky every so often. After it became dark he had the road to himself, most of the tourists heading back to their rooms in Khuzhir and the other small settlements after a day of biking, hiking and sightseeing. Anatoly stopped the bike to unzip his bag and pull out a flashlight, though the moon and stars were providing a good amount of illumination themselves. He continued along the road, walking the bicycle along.

A few hours passed, and soon he sighed aloud. "Maybe this wasn't such a great idea. Why would I think I'd be able to find them in the middle of the night, anyway? I'd have a better chance during the day."

He was just working himself around to heading back to the guesthouse in Khuzhir when a distant whooshing sound caught his attention. Anatoly immediately looked up and blinked as he saw three winged shapes flying by overhead, their silhouettes against the night sky showing unmistakable legs trailing behind them. He stared after them for a bit, then smiled and laughed at himself.

"Well, what do I know?," he commented, and hopped back onto the bicycle, shoving his flashlight into a coat pocket and pedaling after them.

One thing Anatoly discovered in a hurry was that riding a bicycle at a high speed along an unfamiliar road in the middle of the night with only the moon and stars to light your way wasn't the safest thing to do. A few times he had to brake sharply, squeezing the handbrakes and digging his heels into the dirt, to stop himself from going over a ledge or heading straight into a tree. He was sweating from more than just the physical exertion by the time he reached an open spot where he saw the three winged shapes standing on the ground, discussing something.

Two of them he recognized immediately. One was the tiger-looking one, while the other was the bird-like one he had managed to thank before she had flown away. The third wasn't the lithe sable-looking one, and seemed as different from that one as it was possible and still remain the same race. He was a hulking figure that towered over the other two, and from the snatches of conversation he could hear, he had a deep, rumbling sort of voice.

Anatoly stared at the three of them and wondered what exactly he was going to do now that he'd found them. "What am I going to do? Just walk on up and say 'Oh, hi guys! Remember me? Saved me from those muggers the other night about 300 kilometers away? I just happened to be in the neighborhood, and...'" He shook his head and sighed. "Yeah, that'll work."

He leaned his elbows on the handlebars of his rented bike and thought about it for a bit, frozen in indecision, when he heard a strange wet sucking sound. "What was that?" Anatoly peered into the darkness, and blinked as he caught sight of movement along the edge of the small cliff overlooking the lake.

"What the..." His gaped as he saw several figures pull themselves up over the edge, their heads covered in something soft-looking. He could hear more of those sucking sounds as they moved, making their way to the three gargoyles still talking among themselves, their voices probably covering the sounds that the things were making.

"Oh crap..."Anatoly started forward on the bike suddenly and raised his voice to shout, "Look out!"

The three gargoyles spun towards him in surprise, then finally noticed the figures slouching towards them. He saw the gargoyles' eyes start to glow, and the bird-like female and the large one pulled axes from their belts, the same strange design with one blade and a spike on the opposite side, while the tiger-like one merely growled and raised his clawed hands.

As soon as the figures from the cliff saw that they had been noticed, their own eyes started to glow a flickering red-orange, like red-hot coals. They straightened and gave bubbling moans as they charged the gargoyles, raising webbed hands. One of them grabbed for the bird-like female, but she ducked the grasping arms and leaped backwards out of reach. She let out a yell of fury as she leaped forward at the thing and brought her axe down on it at the junction of its neck and shoulder, cleaving the blade in to its chest. The glow of the thing's eyes flickered then died as it gave a last bubbling groan before falling to the ground. The bird-like gargoyle pulled her axe free from it as it began to melt, then jumped back into the fray.

The large gargoyle gave out a rumbling roar of sheer bestial fury as it charged forward with its own axe and swung on one of the coal-eyes. The axe sliced off the top of one's head, then the gargoyle spun and drove the reverse spike into the chest of another as the first toppled to the ground. Another of the coal-eyes spread it's arms wide and charged at him while the spike was stuck in its chest of its comrade. With a roar, the gargoyle pulled the spike out and charged it, driving the head of the axe into the thing's chest and lifting it into the air as he charged to the edge of the cliff. He roared as he threw it out over the edge to go sailing through the air towards the lake below.

The tiger-like gargoyle growled as two of the coal-eyes advanced on him, giving off their bubbling moans as their eyes blazed brighter. He crouched and leaped forward, slashing his claws upward across one of them from it's stomach up to it's face, then spun and slashed at the other one in the same motion, sending a portion of it's face flying off in what looked like a clump of mud. He roared as he pounced on it, clawing away more portions of it until it was nothing but a puddle of goop at his feet.

Anatoly hurried toward the fighting, but gasped as one of the coal-eyes suddenly loomed in front of him and slammed on his brakes, digging his heels into the dirt. Up close he could see more details of the thing. It was human-sized, but it had a long beard and hair made of what looked like moss, while the rest of it's body looked to be made up of algae and muck with patches of what looked like black fish scales. It's eyes burned brighter as they caught sight of Anatoly, and it spread its arms out to grab him as it let out a bubbling moan.

Anatoly gave a yell of fright as he pushed himself back over the seat of the bicycle, falling away from the grasping arms as the coal-eyes leaned in over the handlebars. He quickly shoved himself back along the ground away from it as he doubled over the bike, then finally grabbed it and threw it to the side before continuing after him.

"What _is_ this thing?!" Anatoly quickly got back to his feet in time to see the coal-eyes loom over him, giving a bubbling moan that blew air that smelled of stagnant water and rotting vegetation into his face. He yelled and threw himself backwards, landing flat on his back on the ground again. His flashlight flew out of his pocket and skidded along the ground, turning itself on in the process. The coal-eyes staggered forward after him, and he grabbed the flashlight and raised it, ready to use it to try and club the thing away from him.

He was astonished when the thing winced as the beam of the flashlight flashed over it, taking a step back. He blinked as he looked at the flashlight, then back at the coal-eyes, but he knew an advantage when he saw one. Anatoly quickly scrambled to his feet and pointed the flashlight at it, making it throw an arm over its face and pushing it's other hand at him in a fending off gesture, letting off a bubbling groan with an unmistakable note of pain.

Anatoly grinned as he started to step after it, pointing the flashlight at it's face, then stopped as it suddenly dropped the arm away from it's face and gave off another bubbling moan, this one with the unmistakable sound of a _growl_ in it. He blinked in surprise that rapidly turned to terror as it advanced on him again, the illumination of the flashlight giving it an even eerier look, before the coal-eyes' head suddenly disappeared in a flash of metal.

The student stared at the body of the thing as it fell over and began melting into a puddle of muck, then looked up to see the bird-like gargoyle standing there, her axe still splashed with the muck of the coal-eyes on it. Her eyes were glowing red, but they faded back to normal as she straightened and looked at the human standing in front of her.

"Don't I know you from somewhere?" she asked, tilting her head to the side as she looked at him.

Behind her, the tiger-like and the hulking gargoyles walked up behind her, having dispatched the last of the coal-eyes. Up close, Anatoly finally saw more details of the larger one, and saw that he had a head like a bear, with two round ears and dark brown fur. It loomed over him as it walked up, his axe still in a hand hanging at his side as it glared down at him.

"A human," it rumbled with an element of a growl in his voice.

"Hold, Gnurus," the tiger-like one said in a commanding tone, then looked at Anatoly questioningly. "You... You're that human from Irkutsk, aren't you?"

The light of recognition flashed into the bird-like female's eyes as Anatoly hesitantly nodded. "Um, yeah," he replied, lowering the flashlight. "You saved me from those muggers a couple nights back."

The tiger-like gargoyle nodded slowly, then glanced down at the puddle of muck that had been one of the coal-eyes before bringing his eyes back up to look at him. "And it appears that you returned the favor. Thank you for the warning."

"Ah... sure," Anatoly replied, blinking and sliding the flashlight back into his coat pocket. He watched the three of them for a moment, then cautiously held a hand out towards the tiger-like one. "My name is Anatoly. Anatoly Terentyev."

The tiger-like gargoyle looked down at his hand for a moment, then reached out and clasped his forearm. "I am Saulius. It is... good to meet you, Anatoly Terentyev." He released the human's arm and gestured to the two gargoyles standing behind him, gesturing first to the bird-like female. "This is Anya. She was with me when we... involved ourselves in Irkutsk."

"Yes, I recognized her," Anatoly replied, and clasped forearms with Anya.

She smiled back, her mouth turning up at the edges of her beak. "I _thought_ I recognized you," she said, nodding to him.

Saulius gestured to the bear-like gargoyle as they released each other's forearms. "And this is Gnurus."

Anatoly held his hand out towards him, but the hulking gargoyle just stared back at him impassively. After a few moments, he let his arm drop. "Er... nice to meet you, Gnurus," he said, trying a smile. The bear-like gargoyle merely grunted in reply.

Saulius eyed Anatoly speculatively. "I appreciate your assistance, huma-- ah, Anatoly," he began. "But Irkutsk is a fair distance from this island. Why are you here?"

"Well..." Anatoly reached a hand back and scratched the back of his neck, averting his eyes in embarassment. "After our run-in, I did a bit of research, and..." He sighed and let his arm drop to his side, closing his eyes a moment before looking back at Saulius. "I guess I just wanted to see you guys again, maybe meet you properly."

Saulius blinked and exchanged a bemused look with Anya. Gnurus grunted and narrowed his eyes, eyeing Anatoly as if he wasn't sure what to make of him.

"I... see," Saulius answered after a long pause.

"What were those things, anyway?" Anatoly asked, gesturing to the puddle of muck at their feet.

"Hmm... them, yes," Saulius said. "It is what's called a vodyanoy, the physical shell of a water spirit. We have encountered them before, but their appearances have been more numerous of late." He frowned. "It's disturbing that they can follow us even here."

"Oh." Anatoly frowned. "Water spirits..." He looked back up at the three of them. "Gargoyles. Or leshie," he continued, smiling, then frowned again. "All that stuff is _real_?"

Anya smiled, and said, "You would be surprised, Anatoly Terentyev."

Anatoly looked back down at the puddle of muck, deep in thought. Slowly, he raised his face and looked back at them. "If you wouldn't mind, I... I'd like to hear more about it."

Saulius raised his brow ridges, and glanced aside at Anya, who smiled and shrugged. The tiger gargoyle then looked to Gnurus, who glanced aside, then grunted.

"It has been a while since we've taken a human into our confidence, Anatoly Terentyev," Saulius said, then held his arm out. "But, if you truly want to find out more... then we accept."

Anatoly looked at the gargoyle's arm, then down to the puddle of muck. _What am I getting myself into?_

He reached out and clasped Saulius' forearm.


	2. Meet the Clan

The Siberia Saga

Meet the Clan

Moonlight shone down upon the endless stretches of wild forest below, untouched by the hand of man. With a whooshing sound, three winged shapes swept through the sky high above the treetops. One of them carried a backpack, while another carried a rather nervous human on her back. Anatoly kept shooting glances at the forest far _far_ below, swallowing through a throat gone tight and dry. He'd been rather nervous about this 'gliding' thing ever since he returned the rental bike and retrieved his stuff from the guesthouse.

"Erm... Are you sure you this is safe? You can hold my weight?" he asked Anya, whose neck he had his arms wrapped around while he rested on her back.

The bird-like gargoyle sighed and looked skyward for a moment, mouth twisting wryly. "Yes, Anatoly Terentyev," she said, for the dozenth time since they left Olkhon Island behind, "I'm sure this is safe. And yes, I can hold your weight."

Anatoly heard the extreme patience in her tone and flushed slightly in embarrassment, barely visible through his swarthy Buryat complexion. "Sorry," he replied. "And you can just call me Anatoly, okay? You don't need to keep saying my full name."

"Alright, Anatoly," Anya said, nodding.

Anatoly peered ahead towards where Saulius, the tiger-like gargoyle who had introduced himself as the leader of their clan, was gliding. He had invited Anatoly back to their clan's sanctuary so that they could learn more about each other. The human student was understandably curious about the gargoyles and the clan they spoke of, while the gargoyles were a bit behind the times, unsure about the current ways of the world.

Something hard bumped into Anatoly's knee, and he peered down to see the weird axe that Anya had wielded against the muggers in Irkutsk and the vodyanoi at Olkhon Island hanging at her belt. "Anya, what kind of axe is that, anyway?" he asked.

Anya glanced down at it, then gave a glance over her shoulder at the human on her back. "That? That is my sagaris," she replied.

"Sagaris?" Anatoly frowned. "I don't think I've ever heard of one of those before."

"The sagaris is an ancient weapon, one our clan has wielded for as long as we've _been_ a clan."

"How long has your clan been around?"

"Since time immemorial," Anya replied, a note of pride in her voice.

Anatoly's brow furrowed in confusion. "And, uh... how long is that exactly?"

Anya remained silent for a time, then shot a glance back at her passenger. "A very long time," she replied after a pause, then noticed the expression on Anatoly's face. She sighed and looked forward again. "I suppose if you wish to get more specific than that, you would have to ask Saulius, or perhaps our clan's enaree when we arrive at our sanctuary."

"Enaree?"

"In your language, you would call him...," she paused to think for a moment, then continued, "shaman, I believe."

"Oh."

Anatoly began to ask another question, but then Saulius led a dive towards the trees below and he tightened his arms around Anya's neck and shoulders. He restrained the urge to yelp as they plowed through a light scatter of branches and leaves to a large clearing below. The three gargoyles landed softly, and Anya let her passenger slide off of her back to his feet.

Anatoly looked around the clearing with wide eyes, and Saulius turned and looked back at him, smiling. "Welcome to our sanctuary."

Gargoyles walked throughout the clearing among round, dome-shaped tents made of felt, dyed in greens matching the colors of the leaves and needles of the surrounding trees. The males wore outfits similar to those of Saulius and his companions, while the females wore the hide jackets that came down to midthigh and did without the trousers; some of either gender wore caps and hoods that tapered upward to rounded points. A scatter of gargoyles led animals around, sheep and cattle mostly though with the occasional stocky-looking horse or reindeer.

The gargoyles themselves varied wildly in their personal appearances, with most of them resembling animals like Saulius, Anya and Gnurus. Among them were ones that resembled ibexes and boars, along with others that appeared like tigers, bears, sables and birds. A relative few were more human in appearance, reminding Anatoly of the pictures he had seen of the gargoyles in New York City; their skin colors were mostly greens and browns, with a few white as newly fallen snow. The males wore long beards and had loose hair that fell past their shoulders, and more of them wore the pointed caps than their animal-like brethren. The females wore their hair long as well, down to the smalls of their backs, with some wearing it loose while others wore it pulled back into ponytails bound by a three ornately designed metal rings.

Dominating the center of the clearing was a large square wooden platform that was topped with a much larger version of the dome-shaped tents, its felt covering elaborately designed with flowing artwork that depicted images of gargoyles gliding, firing bows, wielding sagarai, herding livestock, riding horses, and other activities. A metal chimney rose through the top of the structure, from which some wisps of smoke rose. Two other gargoyles sat at the corners of the platform which were the only portions of the platform not dominated by the tent, the both of them tending to their bows.

Gargoyles shot Anatoly looks as he made his way towards the platform with Saulius and his companions, some of them startled while others peered at him with active suspicion. The human student noticed the latter looks uneasily and stuck close to the tiger-like leader.

Soon his curiosity rose again and he looked around at the tents as they walked through the sanctuary. "These are yurts, right?"

Saulius nodded, and replied, "Yes, that is correct." After a moment, he looked back at him. "How do you know that?"

Anatoly smiled. "I've seen some before, and they're still used in the Central Asian republics and Mongolia."

Gnurus grunted, then peered down at the human. "Central Asian republics?"

Anatoly blinked in surprise, then gestured his hand through the air as he replied, "You know, the former Soviet republics? Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan Tajikistan, Uzbekistan..."

Saulius' eyes widened, and Anya and Gnurus looked startled as well. "_Former_ Soviet republics?" their leader asked, sounding slightly incredulous.

Anatoly looked back at them, just as startled. "Yes," he replied, then watched as they exchanged astonished looks. "You didn't know the Soviet Union had fallen?"

The gargoyle leader appeared even more startled at that admission, then shook his head as if to clear it. "It appears that more has happened in the outside world than we thought," he said. "Perhaps it's just as well that we've taken you into our confidence, Anatoly Terentyev. You should tell Koloksai about this."

"Who is Koloksai?"

"Our enaree," Gnurus rumbled.

"Oh." Anatoly nodded. "Your shaman. Okay." He frowned slightly as he thought that over. When he thought of shamans he had the mental image of wooden masks and rattles around blazing fires. Why would one have any interest in the fall of Communism?

As they rounded the last of the smaller yurts, the gargoyle sitting on the corner closest to them looked up and perked his ears at the sight of Anatoly walking among them. The sable-like gargoyle - _maybe the one from Irkutsk,_Anatoly thought uncertainly - slipped his bow back into its case and hopped down from the platform, caping his wings about himself.

"Well, it looks like the trip to Lake Baikal was more interesting than I thought it would be," he commented as he walked up to them, looking at the human curiously. After a moment, his face cleared in understanding. "Hey, you're the guy from Irkutsk, aren't you? The one who was... in a bit of trouble." He smiled slightly at his own understatement.

Even though he had fur, a tail, wings and whiskers, Anatoly found himself smiling back despite himself, and held out his hand. "Yeah, that's me. Anatoly Terentyev. I never got to thank you."

The gargoyle clasped his forearm and shook it, waving his other hand through the air dismissively as he grinned. "Oh, that? That was nothing. If you saw some of the things our clan has had to deal with in the past--" Saulius shot him a look, and the sable gargoyle's smile turned sheepish. "Yeah, well...," he trailed off, then continued, "My name's Lycus, by the way."

Anatoly nodded to him, then glanced over at Saulius curiously. The clan leader noticed it, and smiled. "Lycus tends to get carried away talking." A disapproving grunt from Gnurus expressed the hulking gargoyle's opinion of _that._

Lycus smiled sunnily up at the glowering face of the bear gargoyle. "You really need to build yourself a larger vocabulary, brother," he remarked. "All that grunting can't be good for you."

"Hmmph." Gnurus glowered down at his easygoing rookery brother. "Impudent little..." But one corner of his mouth turned up in a grudging smile.

"Come," Saulius said, and started forward again. "Koloksai should meet Anatoly, and hear what he has to say of the world outside these forests. From what he has said," and the tiger gargoyle glanced back at him, "it sounds as if there have been great changes, changes that may effect the clan."

They continued forward to the platform, and were greeted at its edge by the other gargoyle that had been sitting on the platform as they approached. She wore an outfit similar to the others, and carried her bow in her clawed hand. Like Saulius, she was tiger-like, but her fur was white with black stripes, and watched them with vivid green eyes.

She caped her wings and nodded to Saulius. "Greetings, brother. How was the trip to the lake?" She finally noticed the human behind him, and blinked in surprise. "And who is this with you?"

Saulius smiled and set a hand on Anatoly's back, giving him a gentle push to step forward. "This is Anatoly Terentyev, the human we assisted in our flight over the city Irkutsk. Some vodyanoi attacked us on Olkhon Island and he assisted us."

The female gargoyle smiled warmly and held her arm down to Anatoly, clasping his forearm. "Then I am very pleased to meet you, Anatoly Terentyev. I am Irina. I welcome you to our sanctuary."

Anatoly smiled and started to answer back, but instead let out a small yelp as Irina suddenly hauled his arm upward and pulled him up onto the platform. His legs nearly crumpled when she set him on his feet, but he managed to catch himself in time. Heart hammering, he looked into the confused eyes of Irina, then back at the four gargoyles still on the ground below. Gnurus was his usual stoic self, but Saulius was smiling while Lycus and Anya were laughing.

"Oh, Ancestors, I don't think I've _ever_seen someone's eyes bug out that much," Lycus said, still chuckling.

Irina looked concerned. "Did I hurt you, Anatoly Terentyev?" she asked anxiously. "I've heard humans are more... delicate than gargoyles, and I apologize--"

Anatoly finally caught his breath and shook his head to clear it. "No, no, it's okay, Irina," he replied, giving her a reassuring smile. "I was just startled, is all."

As she smiled back in relief, a reedy voice called out from inside the large yurt. "Irina, Lycus, what's all the commotion out there? What are you laughing at?"

There was a thumping sound that grew louder until the curtains hanging over the entrance the yurt were thrown aside, revealing an elderly gargoyle hunched over with age, holding a walking stick that was undoubtedly the source of the thumping. He wore a wool robe trimmed in fleece, with a stretch of worn leather stretching down the front with patterns of various animals - from birds, to deer and wolves and tigers, to fish - worked into it in various colored threads. Around his neck he wore an elaborately designed gold pectoral with small figures of gargoyles wielding bows and sagarai between two gold braids, with another pattern of trees worked out of a solid base of gold above that with another smaller gold braid atop it, then small figures of cattle and sheep with gargoyles sheering and milking them, with a yet smaller gold braid topping it. His walking stick was topped with a globe of amber that seemed to glow orange when the light hit it.

The gargoyle himself had the appearance of a reindeer, with velvet-covered antlers stretching up from his head, and fur gone silver and gray with age; a white tuft of fur extended from his chin like a goatee. He peered at the human standing in front of doorway with disconcertingly shrewd eyes, his faded-looking wings caped around himself.

"Well... a human in our sanctuary, and at the entrance to the leader's yurt, no less!" He peered at Anatoly, looking him up and down. "You don't appear to be punctured by any arrows, so it seems that you're expected, yes?" The old gargoyle gave a raspy chuckle, and looked past the human to Saulius and his companions, who leaped up to the platform with flaps of their wings, then caped them around themselves again. "Back from the lake already, Saulius? And you've brought a guest with you, it seems."

"Enaree," Saulius said, nodding respectfully. "This human is Anatoly Terentyev," he continued, and told him of the circumstances of their meeting before turning back to Anatoly. "Anatoly, this is our enaree Koloksai. He is the eldest of the clan."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Koloksai," Anatoly said, and held his arm out. He was expecting the forearm clasp with which he'd become familiar, and so was surprised when the old gargoyle took his hand and shook it.

Koloksai noticed his surprise and gave another raspy chuckle. "Now, now, you honestly didn't think we were completely ignorant of human customs, did you _tovarisch_?"

"Comrade?" Anatoly echoed, confused, then his face cleared as he recalled how Saulius and the others had reacted earlier. "Oh... we don't commonly use that honorific any more, not since the CPSU - the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - fell."

Koloksai blinked, then stroked his free hand over the tuft of fur hanging from his chin. "The Party has fallen, has it? How interesting." He turned and placed his hand on Anatoly's arm, pulling him along into the yurt. "Come along, my human friend. You must tell me more."

***

The inside of the yurt was large, easily a good twelve feet across, and white fabric lining the inside reflected the light from the cast iron stove in the center and butter-burning lamps all along the edge, making it seem larger still. Full leather sacks lined the edge of the tent on the side opposite the entrance, and among them was a wooden chest covered with boiled leather and reinforced with strips of metal that was covered with yet more leather sacks. Cooking utensils were placed around the stove, and three large beds of fleeces and felt-covered cushions rested at the sides of the tent away from the hoard of sacks and the chest.

It was some time later that Koloksai was sitting propped up against one of the beds, stroking his hand over his chin tuft again after Anatoly finished recounting the events of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He'd listened to the tales of the attempted policies of _glasnost_ and _perestroika_ that had backfired and resulted in the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and, eventually, the Soviet Union itself in silence. Likewise had he listened to the dire straits of the modern Russian Federation and the former Soviet republics. Now he appeared to be deep in thought.

Sitting next to the elder enaree was another gargoyle who appeared younger than Saulius and his companions, but wore a wool robe much like Koloksai's, but much more plain. His features were those of a lion, and his mane appeared to be just growing out; Anatoly got the impression that he was in his teens. His name was Idanthyrsus, and he was apparently Koloksai's apprentice. He had helped his elder to sit, and was watching him attentively, though his eyes kept straying back towards Anatoly in curiosity.

Saulius sat back against his own bed, while the others were scattered around the circumference of the yurt, legs folded under them. They had listened to Anatoly speak as well, and now Gnurus, Irina, Lycus and Anya were all talking to each other quietly, while Saulius had brought his cupped his chin in his hand in thought.

Eventually, Koloksai lowered his hand and sighed. "There was chaos enough throughout our protectorate after the Tsar fell, and now the Communists have followed him and more has arrived." The enaree shared a look with Saulius, who watched him quietly. Koloksai averted his eyes and shook his head.

"Perhaps we made a mistake when we decided to withdraw from the human world all those years ago," he continued. "The vodyanoi revive despite our absence, and our protectorate is overrun with these... criminals our human ally has spoken of." He looked around at the other gargoyles sitting around the yurt. "Widespread corruption, terrorists, and this Russian mafia that has spread even to distant shores."

Saulius straightened where he sat. "You speak truly, elder," he said. "We have been remiss in our duties... remiss to our very _nature_." He leaned forward and fixed his eyes upon his four companions in turn. "Gargoyles are meant to protect. We have survived, yes, but we are meant for more than that."

The clan's leader looked over at Anatoly and nodded to him. "Perhaps it is indeed fate that has brought us our new ally. He is a sign that our clan should once more involve itself in the human world."

He closed his eyes in thought for a moment, then opened them and spoke in a ringing tone. "From this day forth, I and my elite guard," and with this he looked to Gnurus, Irina, Lycus and Anya in turn, "will resume our clan's patrols over our protectorate." He looked over at Anatoly. "And you, Anatoly. I would like it if you would be our ally in this, our bridge in understanding this new world."

Anatoly drew back slightly in surprise, and looked around to see every gargoyle's eyes on him. "But... I'm just a student," he protested. "I'm no policeman or soldier! I..." He sighed and shook his head. "I'm not the guy you want for this."

"Maybe you are," an unfamiliar voice said, and Anatoly looked up in surprise to see that the quiet apprentice, Idanthyrsus, was looking at him. Saulius and his companions looked surprised themselves, but Koloksai merely watched his apprentice as he continued speaking. "Many great individuals have risen from lowly stations, Anatoly Terentyev. Commonfolk have become warriors of legend, and slaves have become great emperors.

"And besides," Idanthyrsus continued, smiling nervously, "haven't you said that there is widespread corruption? When the warriors are unwilling to fight for the clan, does it not sometimes fall to others?"

Anatoly blinked in surprise, and Koloksai smiled at his apprentice, who ducked his head nervously and again fell silent. _I guess there's a reason he's his apprentice,_ the human thought bemusedly.

"Well..." he began, reaching a hand up to rub the back of his neck, a bemused expression still on his face, "who am I to argue with that?" A small laugh went through the yurt, and Idanthyrsus grinned. Anatoly nodded firmly and held his arm out to Saulius, clasping his forearm. "I'll do what I can to help you and your clan, Saulius."

***

Later, as they all shared a supper of roasted beef and flat cakes to celebrate the momentous decision for both the clan and their new human ally, Anatoly found himself sitting next to Koloksai. Suddenly remembering the conversation he'd had with Anya on their way to the clan's sanctuary, he turned to the enaree. "Ah, Koloksai?"

The elder gargoyle drew his attention away from the flat cake he had been gnawing on and quirked a brow in question. "Yes? What is it?"

"I was talking to Anya earlier, and I was just wondering... just how old is your clan?"

"Our clan has been around since time immemorial."

Anatoly sighed and groaned inwardly at the answer. Koloksai seemed to notice his reaction and smiled, his eyes glinting with humor. "I am guessing you've gotten that answer before then?"

"Er, yeah," Anatoly answered, smiling sheepishly.

Koloksai chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. "It's quite alright, my young friend. That is the default answer for anyone in the clan. But luckily for you," he said, tipping him a wink, "you are speaking to the clan enaree."

The elderly gargoyle reached over and lifted one of the leather sacks with a metallic clinking sound, and picked up a sheaf of papers that was under it. "My predecessors and I," he began as he untied the bundle and began sorting through them, "have had the opportunity to research some of our clan's stories and compare them to the work of human scholars. If you're truly wondering about a certain date, that I can't give you. But it is certain that our clan has been around since... let me see... aha! Here we are."

Koloksai pulled one sheet of yellowed paper out and peered down at it, reading through it. "Yes. Our clan has been around, in one form or another, since before 1500 BCE. That would be, hmm, nearly three and a half millenia." He looked up from the page to see Anatoly's shocked expression.

"3500 years?!" the human choked out, astonished. "That can't be possible!"

Koloksai smiled and wagged a finger. "Now, now, it may be impossible for your human kingdoms and empires and republics, but our clan has lived this way of life since our founding." He gestured a hand around to take in the yurt and the lightweight furnishments. "Our clan was formed alongside an ancient people who no longer exist. And _they_ disappeared because they began to settle down, stuck themselves in one place and got themselves overrun by tribes who followed the nomadic life.

"Think about it, Anatoly," he asked, "which lasts longer? The mountain - big, strong and rooted to one spot - or the ever-flowing ocean that moves relentlessly and wears it away? It is why I think our clan has survived where so many other gargoyle clans have been destroyed."

"Hmm." Anatoly frowned slightly as he considered that. "Who were those ancient people your clan was formed alongside?"

"Ah, I was hoping you'd ask that," Koloksai said with a peculiar gleam in his eyes. "They are known today as the Scythians. Have you heard of them?" Anatoly shook his head; history courses were mainly focused on Russian history.

"Well, the legend goes that the first Scythian king was a man named Targitaus, who was the child of a sky-god and a human woman who lived at what is now the Dnieper River."

"Sky-god?" Anatoly frowned as he thought that over. "You mean there was some god who--" He stopped abruptly as he noticed Koloksai's smile and the subtle way he was twitching his wings from where they were caped around him. He stared at the enaree in confusion a moment more, then his jaw fell.

"You mean that woman... and a gargoyle...?!"

Koloksai chuckled. "That's the legend, anyway, and it's why our clan remained tied to the Scythians. We had a blood bond that we shared with them, and their tribes were our protectorate. In return, they taught us their ways and guarded us during the day when we turned to stone. We've followed those ways even after they abandoned them, and we're still here while they're an ancient people you've never even heard of."

The enaree cocked his head to the side, as if listening to something. "Speaking of stone... dawn is approaching. Perhaps we can talk more this evening."

"Yeah." Anatoly now had a lot more questions than he'd had before. Koloksai started struggling to his feet, and Idanthyrsus hurried over to help Anatoly get him to his feet.

"Ah, thank you both. Not as young as I used to be," the enaree commented as he picked up his walking stick and followed Saulius and his companions as they filed to the platform outside. Gnurus, Irina, Lycus and Anya each took one corner of the platform and unfolded their wings, flaring them out and taking fearsome poses. Saulius himself stood in front of the entrance to the yurt and did the same, while Koloksai and Idanthyrsus took their places to either side of him and took more contemplative poses. Throughout the sanctuary, gargoyles took their places in front of other yurts and the pens of their animals, and up on the sturdier branches of the trees above.

Anatoly watched in amazement as the sunlight slowly began filtering through the branches of the forest, and heard a strange crackling sound echo among the trees as the gargoyles of the clan turned to stone before his eyes.

"Wow," Anatoly finally said, and smiled. "Well, it looks like Siberia has just gotten more interesting."


	3. Through The Ages

The Siberia Saga

Through The Ages

The sun slowly set over the vast sweep of Siberian forest, with daylight slowly fading away into the growing darkness of nightfall. Down below the trees, the last rays of sunlight disappeared from the assembled yurts and animals pens, dominated in the center by a much larger and elaborately designed yurt atop a wood platform. Arrayed along the edges of the platform were seven stone figures, with five of them frozen in warlike poses, while the two to either side of the figure in front of the yurt's entrance seemed motionless even for stone, stuck in more thoughtful poses as if they were contemplating the wilderness around them.

As the last light faded, a crackling sound resounded through the forest and stone splintered away from the eyes of the figures, revealing pairs of white and red glowing eyes as cracks formed throughout their stone exterior. With bass roars and feline-like shrieks, the gargoyles stretched their arms and wings out, throwing their stone skin off of them in hundreds of shards. The same scene played out throughout the sanctuary as the clan's gargoyles awakened from their sleep.

Inside the large yurt, Anatoly Terentyev sat bolt upright from a bed of fleeces and felt-covered cushions, still blinking sleep from his eyes. His heart hammered in his chest as the last echoes of the clan's awakening faded. For a moment he peered around in disorientation, wondering where he was, then remembered the events of the previous night.

He took a deep breath to calm his nerves and shook his head. "Right. Saulius and his clan." He smiled wryly. "No wonder they live all the way out here if _that's_ how they wake up."

The human yawned and started digging himself out from under the fleeces he'd pulled over himself as Saulius, Koloksai and young Idanthyrsus pushed aside the curtains at the entrance and filed in. Saulius nodded to him as he crouched next to the cast iron stove and prodded the fire back into life. "Good evening, Anatoly," he said. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah. Thanks," Anatoly replied, and found himself yawning again. He ran a hand over his face and shook his head quickly. "I'm not used to staying up during nights," he commented as he moved closer to the stove and sat back down, shivering. The yurt was much colder without the fleeces he'd heaped on top of himself.

"Consider yourself fortunate that you have the choice," Koloksai remarked as he lowered himself painfully to sit propped up against one of the beds. He sighed as he settled himself, then unwrapped a cloth bundle to grab one of the flat cakes left over from the night before and took a bite.

Anatoly thought about that. True, he wasn't stone during the day and vulnerable as the gargoyles were, but their stone sleep had its advantages too. _They don't have to worry about insomnia, for one,_ he thought, _and there's no danger of them oversleeping and missing classes either._

When he mentioned that aloud, Koloksai and Saulius laughed lightly while Idanthyrsus smiled. "Hmm, yes," Koloksai said, still chuckling, "those certainly aren't problems we need to concern ourselves with." The enaree popped the rest of the flat cake into his mouth and chewed it a few times before swallowing. "Human or gargoyle, I suppose there are advantages and disadvantages for both," he said as he licked the crumbs from his hands.

Idanthyrsus blinked, then hesitantly chimed in. "So the advantages can cancel out the disadvantages if both races work together?"

Saulius and Anatoly looked to the apprentice in surprise, then both looked thoughtful. Koloksai smiled at the young gargoyle and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, that's so, Idanthyrsus," he said, then frowned slightly as he saw the bundle of papers he'd untied the night before sitting nearby. He reached a hand over and gazed at them speculatively for nearly a minute. Then he flipped to another page and said, "However, both races also need to understand the limits of the other. Without understanding, such ties can become... unknotted."

***

_676 BCE_

_Lake Urmia, Iran_

Hundreds of fires lit the night along the shore of a vast salt lake that stretched off into the darkness. Nomads with long shaggy beards and hair wandered around, dressed in open tunics and thick-woven trousers tucked into boots secured around their ankles with a leather strap. All had a dagger secured at their belts, and carried bows and iron sagarai. Shaggy horses neighed here and there, tended to carefully by their riders.

Near one of the larger fires, there was an argument in progress. One nomad more richly dressed than the others, with a gold pectoral around his neck and braided bracelets made of the same on his wrists, as well as a cap that rose to a rounded point. Opposite him was a larger figure, a gargoyle, dressed simply in a woven loincloth with a sash to secure it around his waist. His features were those of an ibex, with a trailing tuft of fur underneath his jaw and ridged horns sweeping upward from his head. He stood with his wings caped around his, his arms folded at his chest and watched the human nomad stolidly as he raged at him.

"The forces of Aššur-ahhe-iddina lie just to the south! Your clan and ours are bonded by blood, clan leader! You cannot turn your backs upon us!"

The gargoyle leader merely shook his head. "You move south to attack Aššur-ahhe-iddina and his Assyrians, to take the land that is theirs. Gargoyles are meant to protect, Ishpaki."

Ishpaki scowled and stepped closer, glaring up into the gargoyle's impassive features. "We have an alliance with the Mannaens, and they have brought the Assyrians this far north because they now block the horse trade between Assyria and Parsuash. This is our chance to defeat the Assyrians and have their entire realm open to us! Don't you understand?!" The Skudra leader clenched his fist and held it in front of the gargoyle's face. "The wealth of the Land Between the Rivers will be ours to plunder!"

The leader sighed and shook his head again, then brought up eyes filled with sadness to look back down at Ishpaki. "When we formed our blood bond with your tribes, we made them our protectorate. We _protect,_Ishpaki. Don't you understand?" The leader placed his four-fingered hand on the nomad's shoulder, his tone earnest. "We _cannot_ join with you in an attack. It goes against our very nature. It is not too late. We can still pass back over the mountains and--"

Ishpaki growled and knocked the gargoyle's hand from his shoulder roughly. "I will not flee from battle like you and your clan of cowards!" he spat at the leader. "I will ride on without you, if need be! I will show Aššur-ahhe-iddina that we _human _Skudra will ride into battle like lions. Not _fly _away like weak-livered cowards," he finished, looking the gargoyle up and down with disdain.

The leader felt his clawed hands ball up into fists at his side, his eyes beginning to blaze white. "You forget who you're speaking to, Ishpaki," he growled. "Gargoyles do not flee or cower. If you wish to continue on with your foolishness, then I wash my hands of you. My clan and I will return to the ranges in the north." With that, he turned on his heel and stalked away towards where the rest of his clan awaited him.

Ishpaki stared after him in astonishment for a moment, then his face screwed back up in anger. "Pah!" The human waved a hand dismissively at the gargoyle's back. "We don't need your kind, anyway!" he shouted after him, then turned and stomped away in the opposite direction.

***

"The next day, Ishpaki's Scythians and his Mannaen allies fell in defeat against the assembled might of King Esarhaddon's Assyrian chariots," Koloksai continued, looking up from the page he had been reading from. "Our clan members were unwelcome from that day forward among Ishpaki's campfires, who blamed them for the defeat." He shook his head sadly. "We gargoyles can be a proud race, and I fear the clan leader misunderstood his human ally just as Ishpaki misunderstood him."

"Wait a minute," Anatoly said, confused, "it sounds to me like Ishpaki was the one who was being unreasonable."

Koloksai smiled and replied, "I'm glad you are willing to side with the clan leader, Anatoly, but I stand by what I say. Ishpaki was a Scythian, and a man of his time. Humans are, in the end, - and by this I mean no offense - a more fragile race than gargoyles. They introduced our clan to the nomadic way of life, but it was still hard and, to some extent, depended on the products of settled peoples. The easiest way to obtain them was to raid and take them."

Anatoly stared at the enaree, shocked, and Koloksai wagged a finger at him. "Come now, you judge him by your modern standards. Everyone went to war to steal from their neighbors, even the settled peoples like the Assyrians - _especially_ the Assyrians.

"The clan leader couldn't see how great a lure the wealth of Mesopotamia was to Ishpaki, because gargoyles have a greater tolerance for cold and rough living." He raised an eyeridge. "In fact, he would have done better to point out the military might of Assyria, which was militaristic enough to rival Sparta." He shook his head. "Ishpaki was trying to goad the clan leader into action as if he were a fellow nomad, but didn't fully comprehend the rigid code of honor of a gargoyle and so pushed him too hard."

Koloksai sighed as he poured some tea from a kettle on the stove into a boiled leather cup, then took a sip. "Maybe there was no middle ground for the two at that time. We gargoyles can be a hidebound race, and our clan and the Scythian tribes were still learning about each other - in fact, in those days we hardly wore any clothes at all, and we had yet to take names! However, greater strides were made after that confrontation and, as Idanthyrsus said, when they worked together, they were indeed a force to be reckoned with."

***

_512 BCE_

_Greater Scythia_

The sun shone down upon the mouth of the Danube River as the final portions of a large army crossed a recently constructed bridge. Just offshore was a fleet of triremes, their three levels of oars rising and falling in unison as they propelled themselves to the shore and back, delivering information from their scouting further north and fish their nets had caught to supplement the army's supply train.

Dārayavahuš, King of Kings of the Iranian Achaemenid Empire, stood easily in his chariot as its driver drove it northwards along the army as it sorted itself back into a marching column. He was a swarthy man with a dark, thick square-cut beard and oiled hair that fell to his shoulders, dressed splendidly in gold-plated scaled armor covered with a silk tunic, as well as a gold-plated iron helmet topped with a horsehair plume. Behind him followed his royal guard, an intimidating body of soldiers on horseback that numbered into the thousands. They wore armor only slightly less splendid than their lord's, also gold-plated scale armor but covered with tunics of wool, and carried long spears. Their horses themselves also wore scaled armor over their chests and on their heads.

Dārayavahuš teeth flashed whitely through the thickness of his beard as he grinned, surveying the might he had assembled for this expedition against the northern nomads, the Saka. The Thracians had already been subdued after they had crossed the Bosporus, and the barbarians of Macedon had willingly submitted by giving their offering of earth and water to the envoy sent to their land. "After I show these barbarians the might of Iran, our northern border will finally be secure," he said, mostly to himself. The driver might as well have been one of the horses drawing his chariot, as far as he was concerned.

The army marched north and east along the shore of the sea to their east, the fleet of triremes keeping pace with them along the way. They were eager to come to grips with the Saka in battle and show the nomads why Iran possessed the greatest empire in the world, perhaps even to subjugate them and add their vast lands to theirs.

But as they marched north, they encountered nobody. No Saka, no horses, not even their herds of cattle. Before long, the army began seeing plumes of smoke in the distance and found great swaths of the steppe burned in their line of march, leaving no grazing for the army's many horses.

These tactics infuriated and confused Dārayavahuš, and he found himself scowling most of the time. "What manner of men are these Saka, to avoid battle and scorch the very earth before me?" He coughed as his chariot passed through a wayward plume of smoke and rubbed the back of a hand over his watery eyes. The King of Kings peered into the distance, his scowl deepening even further. "And how do they avoid my army without ever coming within sight of it?"

***

In the night sky, two gargoyles glided above the Iranian army, utilizing the updrafts of the fires that had been set on the vast grasslands by their human brothers. One was human-looking with dark blue skin, and wore a long beard and shoulder-length hair of blonde, while the other's features were those of a bird, with an orangeish-yellow beak and feathers of gold and brown. They both wore fleece-edged wool tunics and trousers, and carried leather bow cases and quivers of arrows.

The dark blue gargoyle shuddered slightly as he viewed the flaming steppe below. "We usually take such cares to make sure no fires get out of control back at the camps," he said. "I'm not complaining about the effect on their army, mind you, or how the updrafts help us to glide, but still..."

His bird-like brother smiled as they tilted their wings and banked back towards the northeast. "I know what you mean, brother. The king must truly have been inspired by some spirit to come up with an idea so brilliant and terrible."

He peered back at the ground and took in the various landmarks around the army below. "Well, brother, I think I've seen enough to note where the army's position is. Shall we go and report it to our human brethren so they can continue avoiding the King of Kings?"

The two gargoyles glided off into the distance.

***

One month after his army crossed the Danube and began their march across the vast land of the Saka, Dārayavahuš moodily watched from his chariot the ongoing construction of one of the eight frontier fortresses he'd ordered constructed. It was well behind schedule due to continuing raids and harassment by the Saka horseman and the winged demons - surely spawns of Ahriman himself! - that were allied with them, as well as the worsening weather as the campaigning season drew to a close.

By any measure, the expedition against the Saka had been a complete and utter failure. Not once had the army had a battle worthy of the name, their animals were depleted and weakened by the lack of fodder due to the scorched earth along their march, and the continuous raids were slowly wearing his great army down.

Dārayavahuš suddenly straightened and beckoned his messengers over. "To the commanders of the army," he began, then hesitated on how to word the next part. After a bit of thought, he continued, "We have advanced far enough into Saka territory to terrify the Saka and to force them to respect Iranian forces. We are to begin withdrawing at once to our bridge across the river and return to the empire." He sliced a hand through the air to show that the message was ended, and the couriers rode off.

The Iranian King of Kings took one last look at the unfinished fortress as the workers began abandoning it and packing up their tools. Shaking his head, his chariot turned and began heading back the way it had come.

***

"The army of the Persian King of Kings, Darius the Great, finally withdrew from Scythia after marching for a month," Koloksai read. "He left the frontier fortresses unfinished and withdrew back to Persia." He lowered the page and looked back up at the three listening to him. "Due to our clan's scouting, the Scythians were able to avoid battle with Darius' army and set the fires in their path, while the humans had come up with the master plan and possessed the mobility on their horses to keep them and our clan out of the Persians' reach.

"Darius never had the chance to think about retrying his expedition either. Some time later the Greeks of Asia Minor revolted against Persian rule with the help of Athens, and the Persians undertook two failed expeditions against them. The second one was defeated in a battle at a place called Marathon." The enaree smiled. "His successor Xerxes had no better luck against the Greeks."

Saulius and Idanthyrsus, who had heard the story before, smiled, while Anatoly chuckled. He knew enough of Ancient Greek history to recognize the name Xerxes, and vaguely remember some details about the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae, and that the Persians had been driven from Greece at some point soon after that.

But something was bothering him. "Hold on," Anatoly said, holding up a hand. "You say all of this happened in the Middle East and eastern Europe?" He watched Koloksai's nod, and continued, "Then how is it that your clan ended up this far east in Siberia?"

The enaree's smile faded slightly, and he looked back down at the bundle of papers. He flipped some pages and stopped at a new one, reading through it a bit before laying a finger down to mark a passage. He looked back up at the human and said, "You remember from last night, how I mentioned that the Scythians were eventually overrun?" Anatoly nodded.

"Well, it didn't happen for some time after the defeat of Darius' army," he continued. "It was a slow decline in their military might and their eventual decision to become a fully settled people. However, there was one man who broke our clan's confidence in our human brothers, and we began seeing our clan as separate from the Scythians though they remained our protectorate.

"That man was named Ateas, a king of one of the minor tribes. Over time, he gained power among the tribes and overthrew the other kings, uniting all the Scythian tribes under his rule and creating a vast empire." Koloksai shook his head sadly. "He was a very charismatic man and charmed human and gargoyle alike, and he was a true nomad. He looked down upon the civilization of the peoples to the south, and particularly held the Greeks in contempt. He once took prisoner a famed Greek piper and, after listening to him play, swore it was more pleasant to hear a horse neigh. He also lived a remarkably long time for a human, well into his eightieth decade."

Anatoly blinked at that. "Into his eighties? That seems kind of old for the time. I don't think the life expectancy in Russia _today_ is anywhere near that."

Koloksai exchanged a look with Saulius, then glanced over at the piled leather sacks on top of the chest briefly before looking back to Anatoly. "Ateas was a... remarkable man in many ways, Anatoly."

The human frowned slightly, and shot a sideways glance at the hoard at one side of the yurt. _I'm getting the impression that they're holding something back,_ he thought. He supposed he couldn't blame them - they had practically just met each other, after all. _Hopefully I'll prove to them that I'm trustworthy._

With a bit of effort, he brought his attention back to Koloksai, who continued to speak. "Towards the end of his life, Ateas sought to expand his empire into the Balkans, and sought the assistance of Macedon in defeating a tribe in Histria, what is today called Dobruja along the Black Sea coast. By the time the Macedonian troops had arrived under their king Philip II, the king of the tribe had died and Ateas dismissed them with derision; military action was no longer on the agenda.

"Again, Ateas and Philip encountered one another during the Macedonian king's siege of the city of Byzantium, where modern Istanbul rests. At that time Ateas refused to provide the Macedonian soldiers with supplies, and cited the barrenness of their land as a pretext. Time and again Ateas instigated petty conflicts with Philip, and the Macedonian king's temper grew short indeed. The final straw was when Philip sought to dedicate a statue of Hercules at the estuary of the Danube River, which marked the boundary between the Balkans and Greater Scythia. Ateas refused and, using this as a pretext, Philip finally decided to march to war against the Scythians and their... disagreeable king."

***

_339 BCE_

_Dobruja_

The sun shone down on the flat plain below as the Scythian horsemen fired their bows and swung their sagarai at the phalanx of Macedonian pezhetairoi, whose helmets were topped by crests of horsehair, had light shields slung on their arms and wielded sarissai, long pikes over 6 meters in length. The deep rectangular formation marched steadily forward, pushing the horseman steadily back. There were clashes at the ends of the battle line, where Macedonian hypaspistai, lightly dressed spearmen who wore toga-like outfits and Phyrgian caps and wielded broad circular shields and spears, used their better mobility to prevent the Scythians from overlapping their lines and getting into the Macedonian rear area. At the other end, the Macedonian cavalry, more heavily armored than their nomad opponents, thrust at them with their spears and steadily pushed them back along with the main part of the line.

Towards the rear, Ateas scowled at the turn the battle was taking. He was a very elderly man whose bushy beard and shoulder length hair had gone white with age, and his leathery face was seamed with scars and wrinkles. He wore the typical Scythian outfit of tunic, trousers and boots, and wore a cap that tapered upward to a rounded point, and wore boiled leather armor over them. He raised a slightly curved sword that gleamed in the light of the approaching sunset, shouting, "Hold them, men! Hold them! The sun is almost set!" A nasty grin spread across the Scythian king's face. Philip had been lucky so far, but when darkness fell their gargoyle kin would be able to help them rout the Macedonian army.

The hoarse shouts and clashes of metal of the battle continued as the sun slowly set in the west, to the left of the battle line. As the last sliver of the sun disappeared, a new sound joined the field, that of an immense crackling sound, followed by the distant roars of awakening gargoyles. There were uneasy looks on the faces of the Macedonian soldiers as the sounds rolled across the field, and the Scythian horsemen grinned through their beards and redoubled their efforts against their opponents.

Ateas looked over his shoulder as he saw the thick formation of gargoyles flying towards the battle from behind the Scythian army. He raised his sword to the air and gave a triumphant shout as they passed overhead towards the enemy army. "We've got them now! Charge!" Ateas squeezed his thighs against the barrel of his horse and it shot forward towards the battle, the horsemen of his personal guard following in his wake.

Across the field, to the rear of the Macedonian army, King Philip II of Macedon narrowed his eyes as he watched the winged shapes approach from atop his horse. He was middle-aged man with a dark Mediterranean cast to his weathered skin, with dark brown curly hair and beard, and wore a cavalryman's armor and held a long spear in his hand.

"The gargoyles approach," he commented aloud, "just as I thought they would." He turned his head to a body of men behind him. "Take up your gastraphetes!" he bellowed, and the men picked up what looked like oversized primitive crossbows, with a concavity at the rear of the stock that they rested on their stomachs as they pulled down on the composite bow portion of the device. They loaded wooden bolts and large stones into them and raised them to the air.

Philip drew his sword and slowly raised it to the air as he watched the approaching gargoyles. "Steady," he called as some of the gastraphetes swayed slightly, their operators disconcerted at the glowing eyed apparitions approaching. "Steady," he called again, in a stronger tone as they grew closer, then suddenly slashed his sword down through the air. "Fire!"

A barrage of bolts and stones flew into the air into the swarm of gargoyles, and there were screams as several of the winged shapes tumbled out of the sky to the ground below. Philip let out a shout of triumph and pulled his helmet on, topped by a towering crest of horsehair. "Keep firing upon those beasts! My men, to me! Charge!" Philip squeezed his legs against the barrel of his horse and led a charge of his own personal guard forward into the battle.

Overhead, gargoyles dressed in wool tunics and trousers maneuvered with all their might to try and avoid the constant barrage of bolts and stones coming from the Macedonian gastraphetes. But try as they would, they continued to fall as the projectiles met their targets, and while they were busy avoiding the fire the Scythian horsemen below fought on alone against the Macedonian army.

Ateas roared as he slashed his sword down into the sarissa of a Macedonian pezhetairoi, slashing through it and burying the blade into the unfortunate foot soldier. The Scythian king blinked as he heard an agonized howl, and looked up in time to see one of his gargoyles plummet to the ground. He looked up higher still and saw the barrage of projectiles flying through the air overhead, and the clan's desperate attempts to try and avoid them. He teeth clenched as he scowled up at the sight.

"Ateas!"

The Scythian looked back down to see a charging body of Macedonian cavalry, headed by an all too familiar figure who held a spear aloft in his hand. He snarled as he brandished his sword in reply and charged forward. The spear thrust forward, and he deflected it upward with his blade.

"Fool Greek!," Ateas snarled at Philip as he slashed at the Macedonian king, who took it on his shield and shoved it back, pushing the Scythian backward. "My men are true warriors! Not like your soft city-born spear throwers!"

Philip growled as he thrust his spear at the old man that had continuously baited and insulted him; Ateas squirmed out of the way of the thrust, a remarkable move for a man his age. "You've insulted me for the last time, old man!" the Macedonian shouted. "I'll see your lifeless corpse stretched out on this ground!"

Ateas butted his horse forward into Philip's, knocking it temporarily off balance and causing Philip a moment's distraction as he fought to stay seated atop his horse. The Scythian shouted a cry of triumph as he slashed his sword across Philip's arm. "I will not be killed by the likes of a soft-living, weak-livered Greek like you!" he shouted.

Philip set his jaw against the pain in his arm, and his eyes blazed hatred as saw the taunting, smug grin on Ateas' face. "I am not a Greek," he growled as he clenched his hand tighter around his spear, then suddenly thrust it straight at the Scythian's face. "I am a _Macedonian!_"

Ateas attempted to deflect the spear thrust with his sword, but found the attack too strong to knock away. His eyes widened briefly as the spearpoint sped towards his face, a moment before the Scythian king's anguished howl rose over the battlefield.

A shout of dismay went through the Scythian army as their king fell from his horse, and Philip brandished his spear overhead as he let out a victorious roar.

***

"Ateas died on upon that field of battle at the age of ninety, and his empire died with him," Koloksai read. "The Scythians were forced to pay a huge tribute to Macedon in women and horses, and the empire fell to pieces. The Scythians were no longer dominant on the steppes, and it would be centuries before they could regain the amount of influence that they'd had before, and by that time they had become a settled people.

"Our clan never had the trust of the Scythians that they had before. Ateas' blind prejudices had led them to an unnecessary battle that destroyed his empire and cost our clan many irreplaceable warriors. Though the Scythian tribes remained our protectorate, from then on we were more wary.

"As for Philip, he returned to Macedon and continued to plan his expedition against the Persian Empire with the Greek city-states united under him. Unfortunately, he was assassinated a few years after the battle with the Scythians and the expedition instead fell to his son who succeeded him to the throne. And that son's name was Alexander."

Anatoly waited a moment more, expecting there to be more, then suddenly realized the significance of the name. "Wait, you mean Alexander the _Great?_ The guy who conquered the entire Persian Empire all the way to the borders of India? _That_ Alexander?"

Koloksai smiled and nodded. "The very same. Brilliance in military matters ran in the family, it appears."

The human student gave a short laugh and sat back, shaking his head in amazement. "And now I'm meeting your clan here and now." He shook his head again, trying to wrap his mind around the enormity of it all.

After a moment, his gaze fell upon his watch. He blinked and brought it closer to his face and stared at the time in dismay. "Crap! I have classes tomorrow! I have to get back to Irkutsk!"

Saulius smiled and stood. "It's okay, Anatoly. I'll bring you back to Irkutsk. There should be enough night left for me to bring you there and make my way back to our sanctuary."

"Thanks Saulius," Anatoly said, relieved. He stood in the yurt and held his arm out to Koloksai, clasping his forearm. "Koloksai, thanks for the stories. They were very... interesting." He smiled. "Makes me think I should check out a few history books from the school library."

"Knowledge is as powerful as any bow or sagaris, Anatoly," the enaree replied seriously. "Obtain it and make the best use of it that you can."

Anatoly gave Koloksai a quizzical look for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Thanks again. Hopefully I'll see you guys again soon," he said as he walked out of the yurt with Saulius.

Koloksai watched the human leave, then sighed as he looked back over at the chest off to one side. "Knowledge is indeed power, Anatoly," he murmured to himself. "We'll have to wait and see if you are worthy enough to gain a most dangerous piece of it."

Outside, a winged shape holding another underneath his arms rose from the trees and headed south, off towards Irkutsk.


	4. Third Time's

The Siberia Saga

Third Time's

_Novosibirsk, Russia_

_Four Months Ago_

It was the middle of the night in Siberia's largest city, nearly 1500 kilometers west of Irkutsk. Within one of the city's vast warehouse complexes a group of men stood around a small card table that held samples of Soviet surplus assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades and submachine guns. Off the one side were a pile of wood crates with black Cyrillic lettering and a red star stamped onto them. The men were mostly Russian and dressed in suits with colorful silk shirts with the top few buttons left undone and gold chains around their necks.

One of the men, a Russian whose silk shirt was red and had a shaved head, gestured a hand decked out with various expensive rings towards the crates. "Small arms, RPGs, and enough ammunition to fight a small war," he said with a small grin. "Ready to be loaded into trucks and shipped into Kazakhstan and points beyond. Now, where's the money?"

The man standing across the table lifted a leather briefcase from the floor and laid it down on the table on top of the weapons. "It's all here," he said as he undid the latches and lifted the lid. "All in unmarked American dollars."

The bald man's grin grew wider as he picked up one of the wrapped bundles of dollars and riffled through them with a thumb. "_Ochen khorosho_," he said as he tossed the bundle back into the briefcase. "Very good. A pleasure doing business with you."

The two of them reached across the table and clasped each other's hands just as one of the loading bay doors exploded inward in smoke and flame. The men at the table threw their arms up to shield their eyes while the men around them shouted and pulled guns from their jackets. The two dealers each grabbed a gun from the table before tipping it over and taking cover behind it.

"What is this?!" the bald man yelled angrily. "Who is attacking?!"

The only answer he received were several small gray canisters that sailed through the smoke into the midst of the Russians before exploding in a green gas that began spreading through the warehouse. The men began coughing as they started to breath it in, and several tried to stagger away from the gas while others slumped to the floor in unconsciousness.

Several figures ran into the warehouse through the smoke, wearing gas masks and opening fire with their assault rifles, spraying bullets around the warehouse. The bald man ducked back behind the card table while those that had managed to stagger away dove behind the crates or threw themselves to the floor. The bald man hunched low and closed his eyes at the volume of gunfire sweeping around him and occasionally hitting the table. When it finally let up for a moment, he opened his eyes and straightened back up, aiming his rifle towards the loading bay doors just as he saw a heavy fist speeding towards his face.

The bald man landed roughly on his back, his eyes shut tight against the pain of the punch as his rifle went flying away. He opened his eyes a moment later and groggily began to reach for the pistol inside his jacket when a dark shoe stomped down onto the arm and pinned it to the floor. He let out a yelp of pain and looked up to see himself looking down the barrel of an assault rifle.

"H-hey," he began uncertainly, but his tone slowly grew more furious, "what do you think you are doing? Nobody attacks the _Bratva_and gets away with it! Do you know who you are dealing wi--"

The foot stomped down onto his chest, driving the air from his lungs in a painful burst. He peered blurrily up as the man attacking him removed his gas mask to reveal a darkly handsome Slavic face smiling nastily down at him. He was tall and stocky with heavy muscle, his black hair was slicked back with a few strands loose against his forehead, and he stared down at him with cold blue eyes. He wore a buttoned up wide lapeled dark leather coat with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows with a red shirt peeking out from under it, gray pants and a gold medallion around his neck and gold bracelet around his left wrist. His smile slowly turned into a grin as he kept his foot pinned down on the bald man's chest, propping his assault rifle against his shoulder as other men hurried in behind him, securing the rest of the Russians within the warehouse and checking on the crates of guns.

"Who... who are you?" the bald man managed to gasp out as he stared up at the stranger in terror.

The stranger let out a deep booming laugh as he leaned down and picked up the briefcase of money with his free hand. "You will go back to your bosses in Moscow and tell them to stay out of Novosibirsk," he said in a thick non-Russian accent. "Siberia no longer belongs to them." His grin grew wider as he continued, "Now it belongs to Tomáš Brod!"

***

_Irkutsk_

_October 1999_

Anatoly Terentyev yawned as he walked along the path away from Irkutsk State University's library, one hand holding the strap of his backpack where it hung from his shoulder. His gait was heavy as he grimly put one foot in front of the other steadily, his eyes drooping with fatigue. Saulius had made good enough time getting him back to his apartment, but he'd still had only a few hours of rest before his alarm had roused his from a deep sleep, making him thrash in horror before he had finally knocked the clock to the floor.

Classes had been an interminable torture, struggling to concentrate on the lessons with a brain that seemed swathed in cotton and trying to focus eyes that kept blurring and trying to slide shut on his notebook as he scribbled notes down. Fortunately he'd had second winds hit him here and there, but overall...

"I can't wait to get home and collapse into bed," he muttered to himself as his eyes slowly drifted closed, then jerked them back open with a stab of will.

Anatoly blinked as he caught sight of someone waving to him, and he blurrily wondered who it was for a moment as she began trotting over to him. It took longer than it should have for him to finally realize that it was Nadia.

"Oh, hey, Nadia," he said absently, focusing his eyes on her and quashing a feeling of resentment. He just wanted to go to bed, lay his head on his soft pillow, get warm beneath the covers, and fall into blissful sleep...

He jerked his eyes back open again, then took a deep breath that was half sigh when he let it back out. _Damn, I'm tired._

"Hey yourself," Nadia said as she walked closer. "What's the deal? You head off on some trip to Lake Baikal out of the blue, and you don't even let me know when you get back? What happened? And how was your trip--"

She stopped abruptly as she got close enough to get a good look at her friend. "You look like crap," she stated bluntly.

Despite his exhaustion, Anatoly felt his mouth curve in a smirk. "Gee, thanks, Nadia. You always know how to make me feel better."

"I do what I can," she replied airily, then grinned as she fell into step beside him. It wasn't long before she started to look concerned. "What happened?" she asked again. "You look like you haven't slept at all."

"I did so," he retorted, then paused a moment before he continued sheepishly, "A couple hours worth anyway."

Nadia shook her head. "I don't know why you suddenly decided to go on that trip, anyway. Was seeing Lake Baikal really that important?"

Anatoly let the memories of the vodyanoi, the clan's sanctuary and the stories Koloksai had told him of the clan's past run through his head. "Yeah, it was," he answered, smiling lightly. It was like he had stumbled into a whole other world, and the magic of it was... He shook his head. He wasn't sure how to describe it, but he was glad that he was now some small part of it, exhaustion or not.

Nadia watched him smile, then smiled herself. "Hey, you met a girl up there, right?" She grinned. "Was it some tourist from America or Japan?" She leaned her head forward to look at his face. "Was she rich? Pretty? Was she good in--"

Anatoly laughed and pushed her away. "Get away from me!" he exclaimed. "I don't need to explain myself to you. Who are you, my mother?"

She gave a mock pout, saying, "I live vicariously through others. Sue me."

He put on a show of giving that some deep thought, then regretfully shook his head. "I could use the money, but there's no way I could afford the attorney." He dodged her sharp elbow, then found himself grinning. _I don't feel tired any more. Guess I caught another second wind. Or would that be an eighth wind?_

Nadia sighed as the humor left her, and she walked alongside him quietly for a bit. "Well, I guess you're too tired to go clubbing then, huh?" she commented, but she watched him hopefully.

She sighed in disappointment as he shook his head. "Sorry, Nadia," Anatoly replied, "I just want to get back home and catch up on some sleep." He didn't mention that he had also promised Saulius the night before to meet with the clan's first official patrol at his apartment to give them some hints about which parts of the city were most in need of their assistance.

"Alright, alright" she replied, mouth twisting in a wry smile. "But we'd better go soon, huh? School's been getting to me and I need to blow off some steam. And you," she said, sidestepping to knock a shoulder into him briefly, "are supposed to be the sensible one. Well, when you're not going on trips out of nowhere." She scowled at him. "This better not be the start of a trend, Anatoly Terentyev. You'll ruin our group dynamic!"

"Ah, well, and we wouldn't want that," he replied, and waved with a smile as he hurried towards the street where he saw the tram approaching. "See you later, Nadia!" He saw her wave back, then walk away as he hopped aboard the tram and squeezed into a seat.

He sighed as he relaxed a bit, but kept his eyes moving to keep an eye on the people around him. _Good thing I caught that second wind back there. I wouldn't want to fall asleep on the tram _again!

***

The red Mercedes-Benz convertible roared through Irkutsk traffic with its roof down, weaving through little Lada cars, vans, busses and once swerved in front of a tram trundling down the middle of the street. The screech of brakes, car horns and irate shouts in Russian followed in the sports car's wake.

Behind the wheel, Tomáš Brod grinned as all the sounds echoed behind him. He shifted gears and increased his speed as he reached a stretch of empty road, relishing the strong sweep of the wind and the roar of the car's engine. His turn cape up faster than he'd thought and he pulled the handbrake to screech the convertible into a sideways drift before flooring the pedal and rocketing up the side street.

It wasn't long before Brod slammed on the brakes, letting out an earsplitting screech of rubber on asphalt as the sports car slid to a smoking halt next to a man waiting on the sidewalk. The man frowned slightly at the Czech crimelord as he grinned at him through the noxious clouds of smoke smelling of burned rubber. He had sandy colored hair in a crewcut, blue eyes, and wore a dark grey jacket over a light gray t-shirt, blue jeans, and black boots.

"Why the frown, Sergei? Get in," Brod called out jovially, leaning an arm on the car door.

Sergei shook his head as he got into the car and slammed the door shut. "Boss, perhaps you should drive more carefully," he said as the convertible accelerated back into traffic. "You don't want to draw the attention of the local police before we make our move."

Brod laughed as he slid the car between two other vehicles into the next lane, then cut back into the next lane right in front of another car, which slammed on its brakes and let out a long, angry honk. "The local police," he replied, chuckling, "aren't worth worrying about. The police back in Prague gave me a harder time than the police here in Russia - never mind the American police in New York." He slapped the Russian on the shoulder. "You worry too much!"

Sergei continued frowning, one hand holding onto the door to help steady him against his boss' driving. "It just seems we shouldn't push our luck," he pressed, his tone still calm.

The car screeched around another turn, then was forced to brake down to a slower speed as two cars blocked the street ahead, to Brod's obvious disgust. "We don't need luck in a peasant town like this," he said as he eyed the car ahead of them, his expression stormy. "The Russian Mafia has been no problem in Novosibirsk, or Krasnoyarsk, or Omsk. Irkutsk is nothing," he continued, waving a hand through the air dismissively, "a mopping up job, as they say. Siberia is mine now, Sergei. Soon not even the Russian government will be able to stop me."

Even as he said that, he frowned as his mind turned back to other such moments where he'd felt that his victory was assured, such as when he'd raided the army depot in Prague for weapons, and Rikers Island in New York to kill Tony Dracon. _Every time those winged reptiles got in the way!_ His eyebrows lowered as he narrowed his eyes, his hands squeezing the steering wheel as if it were one of those creatures' throats.

His eyes widened as a car horn blared, and he glanced into the rearview mirror to see a car waiting impatiently behind him. Sergei was looking over at him, his eyebrows raised in surprise; the car ahead of them had long since disappeared and there was open road ahead of them, yet full of his own thoughts Brod had kept going at the relative snail's pace. He accelerated and continued down the street, but at a slower pace than before as he mulled things over.

"Sergei, have all the men and guns that I asked for been brought in?"

The Russian nodded. "Yes, boss, a lot more than we really need. The _Bratva's_ men here are strictly lower class thugs. Not much to worry about." He looked over at the Czech speculatively. "If you don't mind my asking, why do we always bring so much firepower to our hits? Not that I'm complaining, but I'm curious."

Brod's hands squeezed on the steering wheel again, and his teeth clenched as he remembered being held over a pit in Prague by that golem, and being locked up in a cell with Dracon for all those months. Images of bat wings, slithery tails, glowing eyes and grasping hands of clawed fingers.

"Let us just say that I have learned from past mistakes," he replied, eyes narrowing. "Now... I like to be _sure_."

***

It took a while before the sound of tapping on glass finally broke through into Anatoly's dreams. For a short while his subconscious wove the sound into the fabric of his dream, giving him visions of a leaky faucet that always seemed just out of reach and continuing to drip water maddeningly as he searched frantically for it. Then a knock finally jerked him out of his sleep with a start.

"Eh? Wuzzat?" He peered blearily around his small darkened apartment, his alarm clock, his hot plate next to the sink, and his small table and chair indistinct. Just as he was about to give it up as something he imagined, he heard a muffled voice call out, "Anatoly? Are you in there?"

He froze, feeling a spike of alarm arc up his spine like electricity, as he realized it was coming from his window. Then his head finally cleared enough that he remembered that he was expecting guests, as well as the unique nature of his guests. A yawn forced its way out, making his jaw creak as he threw back his covers and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up as he collected himself. "Yeah, I'll be right there," he called out as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

Anatoly squinted his eyes as he clicked the lamp next to his clock on, wincing at the sudden bright light. Then he made his way over to the window and wrestled it open. Cold air swept into the apartment, making him shiver in his blue t-shirt and white sweat pants. Autumn had definitely arrived, and winter was impatiently on its way as it usually was in Siberia. Just outside the window waited Lycus, one foot propped on the windowsill and one hand's claws dug into the concrete of the tenement's exterior.

The lips of the sable gargoyle's short pointed muzzle peeled back in a grin as the window opened, revealing numerous sharp teeth. "Good morning, starshine," he remarked. "Sleep well?"

Anatoly briefly shot a glance towards the sky in confusion, where very few stars were visible due to the light pollution of Irkutsk, then shrugged inwardly and turned his attention back to Lycus. "Yeah, well enough," he replied, smothering another yawn. "Where's everyone else?"

The gargoyle swept an arm up, gesturing towards the roof as he replied, "Saulius and the rest are waiting for us up on the roof. He and Koloksai thought it might be best if you came along on the first patrol." After a moment, he looked nonplussed. "Er, is that okay with you?"

The human student smiled and shrugged his shoulders, saying, "I don't have anything else planned." His briefly thought of Nadia and resolved to go out on the town with her at some point soon. "Just let me get dressed," he continued as he stepped away from the window towards his closet.

A few minutes later, Anatoly was dressed in a heavy coat, gloves, blue jeans and sneakers. He climbed onto the windowsill and sat on it, then grabbed Lycus' free arm and let him pull him up so that he could wrap his arms around his neck. "Hold on now," the gargoyle warned as he began climbing up the building, his claws punching into the concrete as he steadily and smoothly ascended the side of the building to the roof. As soon as he pulled himself to his feet, Anatoly released his neck and let himself fall to his feet.

"That was... impressive," he commented as he shot a look back down along the side of the tenement. "You guys can actually claw into stone?"

"Well, you just saw _me _do it, didn't you?" Lycus commented, an eyeridge raised and a small smirk on his face in wry amusement.

Anatoly blinked, then laughed in embarrassment. "Well... yeah, I guess I did." He looked to where the other four gargoyles stood waiting for them, picking out their leader with the features of a tiger. "So... how does this whole patrol thing work?"

"We glide around the city, we find people who are in need of protection, and then we protect them," Saulius stated.

"Ok-ay," Anatoly said slowly, "but how do you know who's in need of protection? Sometimes it isn't so clear cut with all the corrupt police officers."

Saulius frowned as he considered that, and exchanged looks with Anya and Irina who stood a step behind him to his side and looked just as troubled. Gnurus stood off to the leader's other side, towering over the other four gargoyles, his arms folded across his chest. "If we see them attacking the weak," he said in his deep bass voice, "we swoop down and stop them."

Anatoly shifted uncomfortably. "Well... what's wrong with that is that it won't do your clan a lot of good if you're seen attacking the police, even if they are taking advantage of people," he said. "I've read reports on the Internet about a clan of gargoyles in New York, and your kind has been getting enough bad press."

The five of them all exchanged confused looks. "Internet?" Irina asked hesitantly, carefully forming the unfamiliar word.

Anatoly stared at her a moment, then sighed as he realized just how much explanation would be needed to fully inform them of all that lay behind what he'd told them. Saulius held up a hand, a look of concentration on his face. "I believe I understand what Anatoly is saying," he said slowly. "Our kind has faced persecution before, especially those clans who lived among the settled folk. We will have to be cautious and pick our battles." He looked at Anatoly. "Later, I think I would like to hear more about this... Inter-net, and this other clan you speak of. For now, we will begin our patrol. Anatoly, I would appreciate your counsel."

"Yeah, sure," the human replied, nodding. Saulius walked over to him and crouched down, letting him wrap his arms around his neck and shoulders from behind, then straightened and ran to the edge of the roof. Anatoly squeezed his eyes shut the moment the tiger gargoyle leaped off the edge and snapped his black striped orange furred wings open to catch the wind. The four gargoyles of their clan's elite guard followed by twos, snapping their wings open and following along in a triangular formation.

***

Four nondescript vans parked on the opposite side of the street across from an extremely rundown looking house made of gray, faded wood with splotches of red paint still here and there. The ground floor's windows were all boarded up, and it looked like it hadn't been lived in for decades.

The back doors of the vans swung open and numerous figures dressed all in black clothing poured out, clutching assault rifles and moving quickly behind the vans. Brod was the last one out of the second van, with Sergei beside him. Only his face and neck were visible, the rest covered up by black clothing and gloves. He surveyed the house for a moment, then spoke without turning away his eyes. "You are sure this is the place, Sergei?"

The Russian underling, dressed the same as his boss, nodded. "This is the _Bratva's_ primary processing center for pirated video tapes, clothing, you name it."

Brod smiled nastily. "You mean it _was,_" he commented, then turned his head. "Everyone, get your masks on! Let's go!" He pulled a gas mask on over his face, then grabbed a grenade launcher from the back of the van and led the charge to the house across the street. He brought a foot up and kicked in one of the windows, then fired a gas grenade through it with the launcher. He turned and waved an arm forward to the broken window that began to billow with green gas, then slung the grenade launcher at his back and raised his assault rifle. He charged through the window, gun blazing.

Elsewhere in the city, a car drove down the street. The driver was an older man with a black coat and a brown hat, his expression worn as he made his way back home from another late night at his job in one of the factories. He stopped at an intersection and wasn't aware of the thug running up to his car until he slammed a fist onto his window to get his attention, pointing a pistol at him. "Get out of the car!" he shouted. When the old man hesitated, he slammed his fist on the window again and pulled back the hammer on his pistol with an ominous click. "Get out!"

The old man quickly unlocked the door, and the thug pulled it open and grabbed the collar of his jacket, dragging him out and dumping him onto his side on the street. The youth quickly hopped over the squirming old man and slid into the driver's seat, pulling the door closed and mashing his foot onto the gas pedal, accelerating away. The carjacker looked into the rearview mirror and smirked as he saw the old man get up and begin shouting after him. "Ha! Stupid old man. Shouldn't be driving around so late." He brought his eyes back down to the windshield, and they widened as he took in the sight over a towering bear in a leather outfit standing directly in the path of the car, its eyes glowing white.

"_Bozhemoi_," he shouted, and wrenched the wheel to the side, swerving the car across the road and onto the sidewalk before he slammed on the brakes. The carjacker took a few deep breaths, his eyes still wide. "What was that?!" he wondered, a split second before the car window was smashed by a large brown fist and a large brown furred hand reached in and grabbed the front of his jacket, pulling him through the window with a yelp and lifting him into the air.

The thug looked down into the glowing eyes of the bear thing, his mouth hanging open and eyes wide in terror. "This car does not belong to you," the creature growled as it snatched the pistol from his hand and brought it up in front of his face to let him watch as he crushed it with his other hand. The youth gave out a startled squeak and felt warm liquid trickle down his leg.

"Now," Gnurus growled as he brought the thug's face closer to his, "you will stop taking what isn't yours, or else _we_..." And with this he turned his head and the carjacker looked up to see the other four winged figures gliding overhead. "...will not be happy." Gnurus threw the thug into the side of the building and watched as he slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Gnurus' lip curled as he took in the sight of the human lying on the ground as Saulius and Anya landed behind him. "This was no challenge," he rumbled, "The humans are too weak and cowardly to stand against us."

Anatoly slid off of Saulius' back and frowned at the smashed in car window. "Hey, that old man is going to have to pay for that, you know." Gnurus turned his head to him and growled slightly, his eyes glowing. They immediately returned to normal as Anya stepped forward and shouted, "Hey! Anatoly is our ally!" Gnurus looked over at the bird-like female and sniffed, then grunted discontentedly and jumped at the side of the building, digging in his claws and talons and climbing his way up.

The two gargoyles and the human watched him climb, then Anatoly turned to Saulius and Anya. "What's wrong with him?"

Saulius exchanged a concerned look with Anya. "Gnurus is the strongest warrior in our clan, but... he's never had anything good to say about humans. It did not matter so much when we remained isolated, but now..."

Anatoly frowned as he looked back up towards where Gnurus had gone. "Does he have a problem with my being here?" He looked up as Saulius laid a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

"You are our ally. Nothing will change that," he stated. "Now come, we have a patrol to finish."

Overhead Lycus and Irina glided over to Gnurus as he launched himself from the roof of the building he had climbed up. "So how'd it go?" Lycus asked.

Gnurus grunted and started to reply, but turned his head as he heard the sounds of automatic gunfire. "Those are weapons firing," he growled, a grin slowly forming, then glided off towards the noise.

"Hey, wait!" Lycus shouted after him. "What about the others?" He shot a look over at Irina. "Well, he's in a good mood, isn't he?" The two of them quickly glided after him, pulling out their bows and stringing them.

Back in the Russian Mafia house, Brod and his men exchanged automatic fire with the _Bratva_ men over tables loaded with piles of videotapes, folded piles of jeans and name-brand shirts, and other miscellaneous items. Shards of plastic exploded from tapes and piles of clothes were sent toppling as bullets flew back and forth.

Sergei pulled a gray canister from his belt and tossed it across the room to explode against the opposite wall in another cloud of green gas. The Mafia men coughed and stumbled behind the tables they were ducking behind, but a few pulled on gas masks of their own and continued returning fire.

Brod ducked behind his table to eject a spent clip and load a new one, commenting to Sergei, "This is why it is never good to keep doing the same thing." He popped back up from behind the table and opened fire again, sweeping his bullets across a pile of videotapes and watching them explode in plastic shards and magnetic tape.

The first loud crashing sound was lost in the sound of a fusillade of gunfire. The second immediately caught the attention of everyone in the room as a section of the ceiling splintered downward. Men on both sides began to exclaim just as the floor exploded downward in a gout of dust and plaster. Gnurus fell down through the hole, his eyes aglow as he grabbed one of the tables the Mafia men were hiding behind and threw it against a far wall.

Across the room, Brod's eyes widened behind his gas mask. He suddenly let out a stream of curses in Czech, then boomed out, "The reptiles! Always the reptiles!" He turned his head. "Everyone, back to the vans! We leave!" Brod and his men began pouring back out of the house.

Meanwhile, Gnurus pulled the sagaris from his belt and slashed it down across the rifle of one the _Bratva_ men with a gas mask, slicing through the barrel. He grabbed him by the shirt with his free hand and flung him into more of his fellows, sending them tumbling to the floor in an unconscious heap. The rest of them screamed and ran, pushing past each other towards the back door. The bear gargoyle watched them flee with his lip curled back from his fangs, then turned his head as he heard engines start outside. A low menacing chuckle emanated from his throat as he fell to all fours and rushed outside.

Brod and his men were loaded back into the vans, exchanging fire with Lycus and Irina overhead and they fired arrows into the vans with _ptunk_sounds. The vans screeched into motion and accelerated down the street as one of the boarded up windows exploded outward, with Gnurus emerging from the dust to continue on all fours after the last van, eyes glowing.

With a snarl, Gnurus leaped at the last van and dug his claws into the rear doors, ripping them off. The men inside yelled frantically as they saw the huge gargoyle revealed and opened fire with their rifles. Gnurus threw one of the doors into the crowd of them with a roar, then dug his claws into the roof of the van as he jumped straight up, then landed back down on the rear of the van with all his force, sending it popping backwards up onto its rear wheels. The gargoyle threw himself free as it continued backward, flipping onto its roof and skidding across the street until it slammed into a streetlight. Gnurus' leap free of the van ended in a crouch against the side of a house, then a leap outward as he flared his wings out and glided after the rest of the vans.

In the next van, Brod snarled as he fired at Gnurus through the rear of the van whose doors remained open, swaying back and forth with the motions of the vehicle. "Is bad enough I face the reptiles in Prague and New York," he growled as he kept trying to keep a bead on the dodging gargoyle, "Now I fight one that looks like giant teddy bear!"

Gnurus let out an echoing roar of fury and dove forward, grabbing the roof of the van and ripping it off before landing in the rear of the van, standing upright. Brod threw himself backward out of the way as the bear gargoyle pulled his sagaris again. The Czech crimelord grabbed a two-pronged stun baton and activated it, making it crackle with blue electricity as he thrust it at him. Gnurus quickly slammed his sagaris down against the end of the baton and roared as electricity coursed through him. Brod shouted in pain as the baton was struck from his hands, falling back as Gnurus slowly gathered himself from the shock.

He growled as he raised his sagaris again, his glowing eyes focused on Brod as he swung it down, only to be intercepted by a combat knife. Sergei stepped forward, thrusting the sagaris off to the side in a clash of metal. He fell into a combat stance, his knife held at the ready as he glared coldly at the gargoyle.

Gnurus took in the sight of the Russian in front of him and let out a deep mocking laugh. "Out of the way, human. It is the other one I want." He started to reach an arm forward to brush Sergei aside, then jerked it back as the knife slashed across his forearm in a quick strike. The gargoyle growled as he crouched slightly, bringing his sagaris up to the ready. "Very well. I shall deal with you first."

Gnurus slashed his sagaris down, and Sergei batted it to the side as he seemed to flow sideways out of the way, then darted the knife forward to land another slash across the gargoyle's stomach. Gnurus growled as he swung his arm into the Russian's chest, battering him into the side of the van and crumpling it outwards slightly. Then he bellowed in pain as Brod's man grabbed his thumb and forearm, twisting and locking his wrist.

The bear gargoyle pulled his arm back, lifting Sergei along with it, who used the momentum to swing a leg up and connect a boot to the side of Gnurus' head. Gnurus staggered back at the kick, shaking his head, then slashed the sagaris at him again. The Russian redirected the slash off to the side with his combat knife, forcing Gnurus to stumble forward, then smashed a palm strike across his muzzle.

The gargoyle's eyes flashed as bright as lightning as he let out a roar of fury and threw himself forward into the human, knocking him back to the floor. He straightened as he glared with glowing eyes down at the Russian as he placed a foot on his chest and raised his sagaris over his head. "You've fought well, human," he growled grudgingly. "But now you die!"

Before he could begin to swing his sagaris down, however, Sergei pointed his knife at the gargoyle and pushed down on a hidden trigger, sending the blade shooting out of the hilt with a click of springs. Gnurus roared as the blade buried itself in his shoulder and clutched it in pain as Sergei flipped himself to his feet and jumped up, kicking both feet into the gargoyle's chest and sending him flying off the rear of the van.

Gnurus landed roughly on the asphalt of the street and bounced forward onto his side as he skidded along the street a short way. It wasn't long before Saulius and the others finally caught up and landed next to him. "Gnurus!" Saulius exclaimed as he took in the sight of the battered warrior that clutched at the shoulder that still had the blade sticking out of it. Anatoly slid down off his back and rushed forward, kneeling next to the injured gargoyle as he looked at the shoulder.

"It looks like a knife," he said as he looked the blade over. "With no handle."

"One of them had it, a... strong one," Gnurus grunted out through clenched teeth. "He shot it at me."

Anatoly blinked and looked at the blade again. "A ballistic knife. I've only ever heard of them. The Spetsnaz, the Russian special forces, are supposed to use them."

Irina stepped forward, watching Gnurus with concern. "Is he going to be alright?"

"Yeah, I think so," Anatoly said. "I've got a first-aid kit back at my apartment. We should get him back there to clean and wrap the wound."

"A good idea," Saulius said as he and Anya stepped forward to carefully pull Gnurus to his feet. "Stone sleep will take care of the rest."

Gnurus huffed through clenched teeth, breathing heavily against his pain. "Who knew that humans could fight like that," he ground out, his eyes narrowed.

Saulius sighed and shook his head as he draped one of Gnurus' arms over his shoulders. "Perhaps you won't be so dismissive of humans from now on, brother."

Gnurus grunted as he glanced back down at the blade, then looked down at Anatoly. "Hmm... perhaps not," he admitted grudgingly.

***

Some distance away, Tomáš Brod sat in the back of the wrecked van beside Sergei as it raced down side streets. He slapped the Russian on the back, letting out a booming laugh as his underling slipped the handle of his ballistic knife back into a pocket. "I knew it was a good idea to hire you, Sergei! You took down that reptile practically on your own!"

Sergei nodded, his expression neutral as he carefully rolled a shoulder, grimacing slightly at some pain. "It was strong, though. I surprised it, I think. It won't be so easy the next time."

Brod laughed again and picked up an assault rifle, holding it aloft. "Ah, but at least there's going to be a next time!" He stared out of the back of the van. "We have seriously damaged the _Bratva's_ operations in Irkutsk tonight, and we've shown the reptiles that Tomáš Brod is a force to be reckoned with. We have our other operations across Siberia to draw upon." A nasty grin spread across his face. "I failed to take over Prague and New York, but this time... third time's the charm, as they say."

Brod let out another booming laugh as the van sped off and screeched around a corner.


	5. Midday

The Siberia Saga

Midday

The sun was high in the sky and shone down upon the small farm below. The farmhouse itself was a one story structure with small windows made of aged unpainted planks of wood and topped with a corrugated metal roof and a small round metal chimney. Behind it was a small shed and an outhouse, and a large yard that held some wandering cows was marked off by a roughly built wood fence.

Milking one of the cows into an old metal bucket was an old woman wearing a light coat over a dress and a headscarf that tied under her chin, the very image of a _babushka_. Out in a harvested field of wheat, a balding old man in a long-sleeved button shirt, pants and shoes steadily moved through the field, chopping weeds and roots with a hoe. He worked with a slow, steady rhythm, singing an old Russian folk song under his breath as he lashed the blade of the hoe at the offending plants as he found them.

The old man raised an arm to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of a sleeve, then huffed out a breath. "Hot one today," he muttered to himself, decapitating another weed with the edge of his hoe. Not much later, he found himself wiping sweat from his brow again, and a frown formed on his face as he took in how damp the back of his sleeve was. He began to notice that his entire shirt was damp with sweat, especially around his collar, under his armpits and at his back. The old man peered up towards the sun in puzzlement. "A little _too_ hot for this time of year," he said to himself discontentedly. He swallowed through a throat gone dry as he felt a headache forming, and started to raise a hand to his head when he noticed how red his skin was starting to get.

The old man started to look alarmed now, and turned his head to call towards the farmhouse in a rasping voice. "Svetlana! Go and fetch some water from the well for me, would you?" The old woman milking the cow, Svetlana, looked up from the bucket and frowned at the rasp of dryness in his voice, then slowly stood and headed towards the farmhouse.

The old man stood and waited there, panting and letting himself lean on the hoe to keep himself upright. "_Bozhemoi_," he gasped, "what's happening?" Slowly the wind strengthened until it started blowing dust into the old farmer's face. He squinted his eyes and put a hand up, turning to look as a whirling dust cloud approached from across the field. There was an amorphous light in its midst, that slowly grew brighter the closer the dust cloud grew; oddly, the wind didn't seem to be effecting the harvested wheat stalks at all and the dust itself seemed a strange contrast to the cool, wet surroundings.

With a blinding flash of light, the old man threw his arm up in front of his closed eyes with a startled oath. When he lowered his arm and opened his eyes, they widened as he took in the sight of a tall woman with long blonde hair in a white peasant blouse and dress, carrying a sickle in her hand. Her face was beautiful, but with sharply sculpted angles at her jaw and cheekbones, giving her a severe sort of look, and her eyes were a light brown that seemed to glow with its own radiant light. She studied the old man with a haughty expression, one thin eyebrow raised.

"Who... who are you?" the farmer asked, voice quavering slightly. He was feeling bad enough without glowing dust clouds and strange women showing up from out of nowhere.

The woman walked towards the farmer casually, twirling the handle of the sickle in her hand with her fingers, making the curved blade spin back and forth. "The sun is at its highest point, yet you remain in the field. Why?" she asked in a melodious voice that seemed to have a slight echoing undertone to it.

"Th-the sun?" The old man looked towards the sky again in confusion, bringing his hand up and wiping sweat from his brow as it threatened to trickle down from his waterlogged eyebrows into his eyes. He looked back at the woman, frowning deeply. "I don't know who you are, miss, but the work on a farm is never done. And there is only so much daylight at this time of the year."

The woman gazed at him impassively as she seemed to contemplate his words. Behind them at the farmhouse, the old woman Svetlana walked back into sight carrying another dripping bucket. She looked back up at stopped as she took in the sight of the unfamiliar woman. "Oleg?" she called. "Who is that?"

The old farmer, Oleg, turned his head to answer her. As soon as his eyes left the strange woman, the light brown of her eyes flashed briefly as her face showed a sudden fury. She raised the sickle in her hand, bringing it up to her opposite shoulder, before slashing it outwards towards the old man's neck.

Svetlana dropped the bucket of water and screamed as she saw the blow land. The woman watched Oleg's body thump to the dirt, her expression still furious as she let the sickle hang in her hand at her side. She turned to leave, and suddenly transformed back into the whirling dust cloud with the amorphous light in the center. It moved away and slowly dissipated as Svetlana fell to her knees and wailed in grief.

***

The doorknob to the door for Anatoly Terentyev's apartment jiggled as some muffled low mutterings echoed through. After a bit more struggling, the doorknob finally turned with a metallic click and swung open, revealing an Anatoly desperately trying to free his key from the lock while balancing some grocery bags in his other arm. "Come on, let go!" he muttered at the lock as he pulled at the key, which refused to come loose. "Let go! Let... _go_!" He yanked strongly at the key and freed it suddenly, sending him lurching back against the doorway and losing his grip on a couple of the grocery bags, which tumbled to the floor and spilled most of their contents.

A groan forced its way out, and he glared down at the scattered groceries. "Damn it," he mumbled as he set the bags still in his arms inside his apartment, then headed back to the door to pick up the loose items. He jerked as the phone suddenly rang, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Damn it!" Muttering hotly under his breath, Anatoly quickly swept all the items further into the apartment hurriedly with the side of his foot, then slammed the door shut and locked it before sprinting to the telephone and picking it up with a lunge. "Hello?" He wasn't able to keep all the annoyance out of his voice, but at the moment he just didn't care.

"Anatoly? Is this a bad time?" Nadia asked. "You sound out of it."

Anatoly sighed as he carefully straightened himself upright without pulling the telephone off of the table by the telephone cord. "No, no, it's okay, Nadia," he replied. "I _just_got back in from doing some shopping is all." He spared a glance towards the groceries spread out on the floor; Saulius and the others had taken to stopping by his apartment during their patrols now that he had stopped going on their patrols with them, to hear whatever news their human ally had about the city or the world at large. Anatoly had taken to offering them food when they stopped by, and he soon learned about the size of an average gargoyle's appetite - and how that directly related to the meager budget of a university student. Shaking his head, he returned his attention to the phone. "What's up?"

"Oh. Well," Nadia began slowly, "I was wondering if you weren't busy, that maybe we could finally head out to a club together tonight? It's been _weeks_ since we've managed to hang out anywhere outside of the university!"

Anatoly brought a hand up and rubbed the back of his neck as he thought it over. _She has a point_, he thought. It had been bad enough trying to find some spare time what with classes, schoolwork and getting a decent amount of sleep, but ever since he had become involved with the gargoyles his spare time had dropped to virtually nothing.

_However,_ he thought as he pursed his lips, _Saulius and the others have said that there hasn't been as much activity lately, probably because word of them is starting to get around. Perhaps..._

"Okay," he finally replied, "tonight sounds good."

"What?" Nadia sounded surprised, then a note of eagerness entered her voice as she continued, "Really?!"

A smile stretched across his face. "Yeah, really. Where do you want to meet?"

"There's this new club that's just opened, Club Tempest," she said enthusiastically, but also quickly as if she were afraid he was going to change his mind at any second. "How about we head over there and try it out?"

"Sounds good. I'll see you there, then, okay?" They exchanged farewells, and Anatoly had just hung up the phone when a loud thump, accompanied by the sound of stone breaking, suddenly echoed into his apartment. He jumped slightly at the sudden noise, took a few steps towards his window, then jumped again when a fist began rapping on the glass urgently.

"Hold on!" he shouted out, and ran over to the window to throw the curtains open. Just beyond the glass were the worried leonine features of Idanthyrsus as he crouched on the windowsill, one hand clawed into the concrete above it while the other was free to knock on the window again, his wool robe hiked up around his legs enough to reveal a pair of thickly woven cloth wool trousers at his calves and knees.

Anatoly wrestled the window open and started to ask what was wrong, but was taken aback when the young gargoyle immediately started to squirm in through the window. He stood back and held his arm to balance him as he managed to make his way through. It was then that he finally noticed how exhausted Koloksai's apprentice was, his wings drooping and his whole body sagging as if he had just run a marathon. "Here, have a seat," he said as he led Idanthyrsus over to the one chair in the room and helped him sit with a relieved sigh as he caped his wings around his shoulders.

He took a seat on the edge of his bed as he watched the gargoyle slump slightly in the chair, taking a few panting breaths before closing his eyes and controlling his breathing. Anatoly took that small time to glance around his apartment and felt a stab of embarassment. His window was usually too small for a gargoyle to enter, and the space was more cluttered and messy than he would have liked - especially with the sprawled mess of groceries still lying on the floor next to the door. The gargoyles may have lived in yurts in the Siberian forests, but they lived in the spare nomad style with everything tucked away into its own place. He quickly stood and started picking groceries up, putting them in cupboards and on shelves.

"You don't need to clean up on my account," Idanthyrsus said from behind him as he opened his eyes and noticed the human's activity. "I am the guest in your home, after all."

"It's not usually like this," Anatoly replied as he picked up the last of he groceries and put them away, then glanced at the gargoyle before grabbing a package of instant noodles and setting a pot of water to boil on his hot plate. "You look like you've been gliding non-stop all the way from the clan's sanctuary," he commented as he turned to face Idanthyrsus. "Why did you come here in such a hurry, Idan... Idanthyr..." A look of embarrassment crossed his face. "Um... do you mind if I just call you Ida?"

The young gargoyle blinked in surprise at that, then visibly thought it over for a bit before nodding slowly. "Alright, that sounds okay. As for why I came here in such a hurry... well, you've heard about how we've been known as leshie, yes? Woodland spirits who make pacts with herdsmen and hunters?" Anatoly nodded; it was through that folk belief that he had encountered Saulius for the second time on Olkhon Island.

"It isn't that far from the truth, though we also make such pacts with farmers in the more remote sections of the north. We protect them, and in return they help to protect us through hiding our presence, protecting us during the day, and sometimes providing us with supplies when they have extra to spare." Idanthyrsus' mouth twisted. "The whole part about our making them forswear Christianity in the process is completely false. Humans get such ideas in their heads just because we turn to stone during the day." He suddenly looked alarmed, and continued, "Not that I'm saying that's so about you, Anatoly. You've been a true friend to our clan, from everything I've heard, and--"

Anatoly smiled and raised a hand to stop the torrent of apology from the leonine gargoyle. "It's okay, Ida. I know what you meant. But, ah... you were saying something about pacts with farmers?" As he spoke he opened the package of noodles and set them in the water to cook.

"Right, right," Idanthyrsus said, shaking his head. "My apologies. There are farmers we know in the north who have been getting attacked as they work their fields, and some of them have even been killed." He sighed and clasped his hands together on his lap. "Members of our clan have tried to find the attacker, but it appears that she is nowhere to be found when we're awake during the night."

Anatoly paused in his food preparation as he considered that, then set the prepared noodles in a bowl and held them and a fork out to the gargoyle. He shook his head when Idanthyrsus started to protest, saying, "You look hungry. Here." The young gargoyle took the bowl and fork with a humble, "Thank you," before digging in ravenously. The human student sat back on the edge of his bed and watched him eat for a bit, then asked, "So why come to me?"

The gargoyle finished chewing the food in his mouth and swallowed before answering. "Koloksai feels that you would be better suited towards helping us discover more about this attacker than anyone in the clan. She attacks and disappears before nightfall, so..."

"So I could be around during the day and see what's going on," Anatoly finished for him, then frowned. "You said she. It's a woman attacking these farmers?"

Idanthyrsus nodded. "Yes, and the reports we've gotten from the witnesses are... strange. Koloksai isn't sure what to make of them, and has charged me with investigating with your assistance. He says it will help with my training." He peered at the human in concern. "Um... you will help me, won't you?"

Anatoly smiled and leaned forward, patting the gargoyle on the arm. "Yes, I'll help you, Ida. Just let me gather some things together and I'll go with you." He stood and walked over to get his backpack, then emptied it of books and started filling it with clothes and food. "Are you going to be able to carry me up there?"

The leonine apprentice finished his bowl of noodles with a slurp, then set the dishes aside as he replied, "Anya should be along shortly after her patrol is over. She'll be able to accompany us to the north."

"Okay." He continued packing his backpack, readying himself to leave. In all the activity, he completely forgot about his earlier conversation on the phone.

***

Nadia Shalenko frowned as she looked at her watch again. She was standing outside Club Tempest and there was already a large line headed inside. The loud music was thumping through the walls and positively blared whenever the doors opened to admit new partygoers. It looked like the new place was really rocking - and she was waiting outside for someone who should have been there already.

Her brown hair, long enough to cover the back of her neck, was styled into a wavy pattern that framed her face, and she wore eyeshadow around her green eyes. She wore a white stretch cotton ribbed shirt with a dipping neckline with the sleeves pushed up to her forearms, a black miniskirt and black pumps. She had gone to the trouble of buying the outfit a few weeks ago when she was still begging and cajoling Anatoly to go clubbing with her; he was the one who kept her from going too outrageous when they were out and was there to warn away the real creeps who tried to move in on her after she had been hitting the vodka too hard.

"Damn it, Anatoly," she growled under her breath. He'd _said_ he was going to be there! She folded her arms and glowered as she glanced both ways down the street, looking to see if maybe he was running up towards the club at the last minute with an apology and an explanation. But all she saw was the line snaking towards the door and the usual Irkutsk traffic.

Finally, she sighed. "Well... maybe something happened." She started to look concerned. "I hope it's nothing serious." Troubled, she started walking away from the club.

***

As soon as Anya and Idanthyrsus touched down along the main road of the small village, Anatoly released his arms from around the Anya's neck and got to his feet. He looked around as he accepted his backpack back from Idanthyrsus, sliding one strap over a shoulder. The village, as far as he could tell, had no name, and it certainly looked like it. The only light came from fires and lanterns inside the few houses, and the only other structures beside them were a barn and a few smaller structures whose use he couldn't immediately identify.

"Well, it's... small," Anatoly commented as he looked around, his expression a bit sour. He was a city boy himself, and though Irkutsk was nowhere on the scale of Novosibirsk, and definitely not that of Moscow or Saint Petersburg, it was kilometers beyond this little peasant village set in the middle of the Siberian wilds. _I feel like I've stepped back to the time of the Tsars,_ he thought.

"It's better that way," Anya remarked. "No offense, Anatoly, but when too many humans show up in a place, they insist on _building_ things everywhere." She shook her head, resting one hand on her hip. "All those railroads and factories..." A shudder ran through her.

"And besides that, it is important to maintain the delicate balance between the human world and its powers of science, and the wilderness and its powers of magic," Idanthrysus chimed in. "Koloksai says that both have their place, but neither should overwhelm the other."

Both Anatoly and Anya looked dubious at that statement, each for their own reason. "Magic?" the human asked skeptically. "I know that Koloksai is supposed to be a shaman or something, but come on..."

The corner of Anya's beak turned up in a wry smile. "And what do you make of leshie who turn to stone during the day, and vodyanoi that possess walking mud piles and attack people?"

Anatoly was silent for a bit as he considered that. "Hmm," was the only response he could muster to that, and the two gargoyles exchanged an amused look.

A group of villagers slowly approached the three of them as they spoke, and a middle aged man stepped forward as their conversation lapsed. He bobbed his head towards Anya and Idanthyrsus nervously, and shot a suspicious look towards Anatoly. "Greetings, leshie," he began, "I am the village headman, and I am glad you have come to help us. We have received word from an outlying farm of another attack, and Oleg Polivanov lies dead at the hands of this... crazy woman."

Idanthyrsus exclaimed in dismay, while Anya frowned. "We are sorry to hear this, headman," the teenager responded, obviously trying his best to sound formal and equally obviously unsure of himself. "I am Idanthyrsus, and this is Anya of our elite guard." Anya and the headman exchanged nods before the leonine gargoyle turned to his human companion. "And this is Anatoly Terentyev, an ally of our clan." The headman frowned as he looked Anatoly over, then slowly extended his arm and shook his hand. His was callused and had dirt ground into the knuckles and under fingernails cut short.

"You come from the south, do you?" the headman asked neutrally, glancing at the synthetic material of his backpack and coat, his jeans and sneakers.

"I guess so," Anatoly replied, frowning slightly. "I'm up here from Irkutsk, anyway."

The headman grunted and eyed him for a moment more, then straightened and slapped a hand on his arm. "Well. Any friend of the leshie is welcome here." He cocked an eye towards the lightening horizon and looked back to the gargoyles. "Do you have any preference for where you would like to rest during the day?"

"Just somewhere out of the way should be fine," Idanthyrsus replied, and Anya nodded in agreement. The three of them followed the headman into one of the unidentified buildings, which looked to be a storage area for scrap metal and lumber. After a look around the two gargoyles nodded approvingly. "This should be do nicely," Anya said.

Anatoly and the headman watched as the two of them took their poses, Anya with her fierce warrior pose and Idanthyrsus with the more contemplative pose Anatoly had come to suspect was reserved for enarees - and apparently their apprentices as well. As the disc of the sun crested the rolling tree clad hills surrounding the village, the two of them turned to stone with a loud crackling sound. Anatoly smiled as he saw it. "I'll never get tired of that," he said to himself.

"The leshie are indeed remarkable," the headman agreed. "We should be tending to the fields soon. I have some extra blankets in my home, and some space near the stove if you need a place to rest."

"Thanks," Anatoly replied, nodding. "I'll just take a look for now so I'll know where to go. I should probably help keep an eye out for this woman who's been attacking you and your neighbors." The headman nodded in agreement and the two of them walked out, leaving the gargoyles to their stone sleep.

Several hours later, Anatoly was yawning as he sat on the wood fence, leaning forward resting his elbows on his legs to counter the weight of the backpack he wore. Out in the fields the headman and most of the villagers were using hoes to attack weeds and roots, while others got to their hands and knees with spades and yanked them out. He had gone out there himself curiously and had helped pull a few weeds, but the waking hours of the day and night before had started to catch up with him and so... here he was.

He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, then smiled. "Well, it _is_ good to breath some air without car exhaust in it for once," he commented aloud. "But something better happen soon, or I'm going to fall asleep." He brought his hand up to his mouth as he yawned again, his jaw widening until he could feel it creak, then blinked sleepily as he took a deep breath through his nose.

When Anatoly's eyes finally refocused, he noticed that the wind had picked up slightly and saw a cloud of dust form together at the edge of the field. It condensed into a whirling dust cloud in which an amorphous light grew in the middle of it. The villagers exclaimed as they saw it, but Anatoly noticed that they moved about slowly, lethargic, as if they had been greatly weakened.

"Me and my big mouth," he muttered to himself as he jumped off the fence and hurried into the field. As he drew closer to the dust cloud, however, he felt himself start to sweat and unbuttoned his coat. At first he ignored it, thinking it was due to his sudden physical exertion and the stress of the moment. But the closer he got, the worse his sweating became and the more he felt himself drained from the heat his body was experiencing. "Damn... not good," Anatoly said to himself as he wiped his sleeve across his forehead.

Ahead of him the whirling dust cloud slowed as it neared the village headman, then suddenly the Buryat student was clenching his eyes shut against a painfully bright flash of light, letting out a startled shout of pain as he turned his face away from it reflexively, a shout echoed by the other villagers in the field. When the light cleared, Anatoly blinked against the spots in his vision and looked back to see a tall blonde woman in a white female peasant outfit that looked straight out of the days of the Tsars. She was gazing at the headman with disdain, twirling a sickle casually between the fingers of one hand. "What the..." Anatoly gaped at the sight a moment, then quickly slung his backpack off his shoulders to the ground in front of him. He ripped the zipper back to open it and plunged his hands in, searching frantically.

"The sun is at its highest point, headman, yet your villagers remain in the field," the woman said in her strangely melodious voice as she slowly approached the headman. "Why?"

"Wh-what?" the headman asked, voice quavering from weakness and fear. Before the woman could do any more than open her mouth to speak again, a flash of bright light accompanied by a mechanical whirring sound caused her to blink and shift her attention. With his backpack at his feet, Anatoly lowered the instant camera from his eye as the developing picture spit out of the front of it. He blinked as he got a better look at the woman's sharply sculpted looks and the gently glowing light brown eyes. "Uh...," he began, momentarily caught off guard, "Over here! I'd, ah... I'd..." His eyes fell back down to the instant camera, then quickly brought it back up to his face to aim it again. "I'd like to take your picture!" The woman's brow creased slightly in puzzlement, and Anatoly grumbled to himself, "Yeah, that sounded brilliant."

The woman started to approach him slowly, her eyes fixed on the camera. "What manner of sorcery is this, to summon a flash of lightning with no accompanying thunder?" she asked querulously. She blinked against the camera's flash as Anatoly took another picture, a frown forming as she continued to approach him.

"This?" Anatoly quickly pulled the new picture out and stuffed it into a coat pocket, then readied the camera again. "This is an instant camera. The flash illuminates the area and then takes your picture, exposing it to the film instantly," he explained. He clicked another picture, taking a step back and pocketing that picture as the woman grew ever closer. "You're very photogenic, by the way," he remarked as he noticed the villagers were edging away from the confrontation. _They're safe, but now _I'm _the one in trouble!_, ran through his mind. "Have you thought about modeling?"

"Enough of this foolishness!" the woman shouted suddenly, her voice echoing across the field in anger, the light brown of her eyes flashing. "I will not be toyed with by a mortal wizard! You will answer me _now_, or I shall--" She winced suddenly and turned her eyes skyward with a scowl. Her eyes were filled with hate as she looked back at Anatoly. "Pray to your gods that we never meet again, mortal," she spat at him, then transformed back into the whirling dust cloud. It swept away quickly, dissipating as it reached the edge of the field.

Anatoly stared at where the dust cloud had faded away, eyes wide, his heart hammering in his chest from residual panic. He took a shaky breath, then brought his hand up and pulled one of the pictures from his pocket. It finished developing as he watched, and he looked at the clear image of the woman captured in it, eerily seeming brighter than her surroundings, the camera's flash glinting off the metal of the sickle in her hand.

When the sun set that evening, cracks ran across the stone forms of Anya and Idanthyrsus before the two of them suddenly threw their arms out above their heads with roars, Anya's eyes glowing red while the younger male's were glowing white as they shed their stone skin in one fierce stretch. Anatoly quickly stepped back as the stone shards fell at his feet, blinking at the seeming violence of their awakening, which he had never seen personally before.

Anya brushed some stray stone shards from her shoulder, then smiled as she looked up and noticed the human standing there. "Hello, Anatoly." The Buryat found himself smiling back and nodding to her, then blinked and shifted his attention to Idanthyrsus as he approached him eagerly. "Anatoly, how very good to see you! Have you any new information on the woman attacking the farmers?"

Anatoly pulled the pictures out of his pocket as he replied, "You could say that..."

After he had finished relating the tale of what had happened during the day, the two gargoyles looked at the pictures he had taken. Anya was frowning down at the image in confusion, while Idanthyrsus looked contemplative as he jutted his jaw out slightly, chewing on his lower lip as he examined the photograph in his hand. "You say she appeared from a dust cloud?" the apprentice asked hesitantly.

"Yeah, that's right," Anatoly replied, then noticed the expression on the young gargoyle's face. "You know who she is?"

"I believe so," Idanthyrsus said. "If I am correct, then this is Poludnitsa - Lady Midday - a beast that our clan has not encountered in many years, not since my master Koloksai was younger than I."

Anya let out a low whistle and remarked, "That _is_a long time." Idanthrysus looked at her in shock, not sure whether to be scandalized or amused.

"Er, beast?" Anatoly asked hesitantly. "She looked human enough to me. Well, except for the whole glowing eyes and turning into a cloud of dust thing."

The leonine gargoyle turned his attention back to his human companion. "A beast indeed, Anatoly," he said. "She is distantly related to the Third Race, and inhabits farm fields during the middle of the day, inflicting heatstroke upon farmers that work when the sun is at its highest."

"Yeah, I felt that," the Buryat human remarked as he rubbed the back of his neck. He frowned and asked, "What do you mean 'distantly related to the Third Race'? Who are they? And who are the first two?"

Both Anya and Idanthyrsus looked surprised at the question. "The Third Race are known as Oberon's Children," Anya explained. "I thought everyone knew this."

Seeing the puzzlement on Anatoly's face, Idanthyrsus explained, "Oberon's Children are a race of pure magic, who involved themselves in mortal affairs long ago and were worshipped as deities. Oberon was also known as Zeus to the Greeks, and Jupiter to the Romans, while in this part of the world he was known as Tengri. His subjects are a varied breed and were spread around the world and known to all the ancient human peoples as his children within various pantheons. Some examples of his subjects are Athena, Puck, Odin--"

"Okay," Anatoly cut in, nodding slowly. "I think I get the idea. So this Poludnitsa is distantly related to them. Who are the first two races then?"

"Gargoyles and humans, of course," Koloksai's apprentice said, smiling. "Though not as powerful individually as Oberon's Children, our races have their place in the world as well. We gargoyles are protectors, defenders of the night with great physical abilities, while humans are active during the day and maintain many skills, and can produce individuals of great power and renown."

"Oh. Alright." Anatoly took a deep breath as he wrapped his mind around the whole concept. "So how do we deal with Poludnitsa then?"

Idanthyrsus began pacing back and forth, clasping his hands behind his back, his expression thoughtful. "Well, it is said that she will stop people in the field to ask them questions or engage them in conversation. If anyone fails to answer a question, or tries to change the subject or, worst of all, diverts their attention from her, she will strike them with an illness, break their bones or cut off their head." He stopped and nodded to Anatoly, continuing, "Your distracting her with your camera probably saved the village headman's life."

"Yeah, well..." The human shifted from foot to foot, embarassed. "All I did was take a few pictures." Anya chuckled slightly at his modesty, but the young apprentice continued his pacing.

"Unfortunately, due to her preferred time of appearance, nobody of our clan has personally fought her." He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "That is probably why we've had little to do with farmers until only decades ago, since the nature of our slumber is the polar opposite to that of Poludnitsa. However..." He stopped and closed his eyes, frowning slightly as he checked his memory. "I remember reading something about a harvest ritual. Hmm... I wish I had access to the clan's records here." His frowned deepened as he visibly struggled to remember.

His contemplation took so long that Anya began to reach a hand over to shake him out of it when Idanthyrsus' eyes flew open and he exclaimed suddenly, startling both his companions. "I have it!" He began pacing back and forth furiously, his hands shaping the air as he spoke. "Poludnitsa was an associate of Jarilo, a Child of Oberon worshipped as a Slavic deity that represents war and the harvest, before she decided to go her own way. The farmers would have a spring festival in which they would fashion a doll made of straw and identify it as a 'Jarilo', and they would take it around for a walk through the country and villages on the day of the festival. This would extend to them Jarilo's protection, and so give to them fertility and abundance, while also protecting them from such influences as Poludnitsa."

"Hold on," Anatoly said. "It's nowhere near spring now, it's autumn."

"Yes," the apprentice replied, frowning again. "Which means a variation on the ritual will be needed to deal with Poludnitsa to account for it being the harvest season rather than the planting season. Hmm." He paced a bit more, then suddenly stopped and, after a moment, slowly nodded. "Yes, that just might do it," he whispered, then turned to face Anatoly. "Could you tell the village headman that I need to speak with him? And you should probably get some rest - he's likely going to need your help tomorrow."

Anatoly started to protest, but found himself yawning instead. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. I'll go get him then."

Idanthyrsus nodded to him and smiled. "Thank you. When we meet tomorrow night, hopefully this will all be resolved."

***

Nadia fumed as she sat at her desk in her apartment, unable to concentrate on the schoolwork and books arrayed in front of her. Her eyes kept drifting over to her telephone, which she kept expecting to ring with a call from Anatoly - preferably with a story about why he hadn't shown up at the club the night before and had been a no-show at university during the day.

"I swear, Anatoly Terentyev, you had better be hospitalized," she muttered under her breath. A moment later she felt guilty about saying that, but it wasn't enough to completely override her annoyance.

"One more day, Anatoly. I'd better hear from you soon."

***

The sun blazed down on the harvested field of wheat just outside the village. A few villagers were again working at weeding the field and preventing the encroachment of roots from the surrounding trees, while off at the edge next to the fence the headman was busy shaping one of the sheaves of wheat that had been harvested. Anatoly waited at a point in between, swallowing nervously with his open backpack at his feet. "Maybe I should've stayed awake," he muttered. "Then maybe I wouldn't have been volunteered for this."

Out in the field one of the villagers swiped the back of her sleeve across her forehead, then quickly waved an arm over her head towards the headman. "Here we go," Anatoly whispered as he felt the first beads of sweat on his brow. At the edge of the field particles of dust slowly rose into the air and floated towards one spot before picking up speed and forming into a whirling cloud. The light in its center started small, looking almost like a firefly, before it slowly grew and gained in brightness. The dust cloud whirled onto the field, and the villagers raised their hands to shield their eyes.

In a painfully bright flash of light, Poludnitsa again appeared, holding her sickle in her hand. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the female villager that had waved before, but her eyes lifted and locked onto the sight of Anatoly standing nearby before she could approach her. A scowl twisted her beautiful, otherworldly features as she gripped the handle of the sickle tightly. She began stalking slowly towards him, the light brown of her eyes flashing dangerously.

"I warned you during the last high sun, mortal," she growled. "Do you think me a fool, to be dazzled by your 'instant camera' magic again? It will not save you this time!"

Anatoly blinked and instinctively took a couple of steps back. _Hey, she's coming right after me! This wasn't supposed to happen! _"Woah, hold on a second," he protested, holding his hands up. Behind him the village headman had finished shaping the sheaf of wheat into a doll and was murmuring over it in a low voice. Two other villagers were hurriedly dragging a metal drum over from the scrap metal shed and dumping firewood into it.

"I will hold on for no length of time!" Poludnitsa snarled as she swung her sickle at the university student. Anatoly yelped and quickly ducked the slice, then threw himself to the side as she slashed it down after him, landing roughly on his side. She stalked after him as one of the villagers doused the firewood with kerosene, while the other struck a match and threw it into the drum to light it.

"Can't we talk about this?!" Anatoly yelled a moment before he rolled away from the sickle as it descended, hearing the light _shoonk_ sound as it sliced into the dirt where he'd been a moment before. He quickly looked up and rolled again as the sickle descended towards where his face had been. Panic was all but choking him as he tried to avoid the blade of the farming instrument.

"Your blood shall be taken in payment for the transgressions of this village!" Poludnitsa slashed her sickle across his chest, but Anatoly dodged back just in time, the blade instead catching the fabric of his coat and slicing a line through it. She started to raise the sickle again as the village headman finally raised the doll above his head and called out, "I name you Poludnitsa!"

The field spirit looked up abruptly at that, and blinked as her entire body began to glow. Tiny streamers of light suddenly flowed from her and across the field to the doll made from the wheat sheaf, which began to glow in turn. "What are you doing?!" she demanded of the headman, and started walking quickly over towards him, her eyes flaring and the sickle held threateningly in her hand.

When she was only a few steps away, the last of the streamers flowed into the doll and it stopped glowing. Holding the doll even higher, the headman called out, "Poludnitsa, I cast you out!" With that, he flung the doll into the fire of the metal drum.

Poludnitsa stopped suddenly, and her face twisted in pain as the doll began to be consumed by the flames. "No!" she screamed. "I will not be defeated! I am the Lady of the Midday!" She screamed again, a ear searing screech of pain as she arched her back in pain. Her body began glowing brighter and brighter until, with a painful flash of light, she disappeared into a cloud of dust that slowly settled to the ground as the last echoes of her scream faded.

Anatoly slowly sat up as the villagers let out a cheer, his expression dazed. Before he could react he was hauled to his feet by the headman and several villagers were pounding the two of them on their backs in congratulations. "You are truly an ally of the leshie!" the headman bawled over the noise of the villagers. "Tonight we celebrate our deliverance from Poludnitsa!"

Anatoly blinked and let himself be dragged along with the group back towards the village. _Wow... did I really just help liberate a village from an evil spirit?_, he thought bemusedly. He chuckled as a glass was pushed into his hand. _Too bad this doesn't count towards school credits._

***

Nadia's mouth was tight with anger as she waited in the line snaking towards the front door to Club Tempest. _Another day without him showing up, and no calls either. He must have gone on another surprise trip!_, she thought. Well, she was tired of waiting around for Anatoly to find some time to go clubbing with her. _I'm a big girl, I can damn well take care of myself._

She wore the same outfit as she had the night before last, and the bouncer nodded and waved her through when she got to the front. The loud music washed over her as she walked in, and she grinned as she moved through the crowd, feeling the pulse and heat of the club and its occupants like a living being as the floorboards vibrated under her feet.

Nadia soon lost herself in the music, jumping up and down slightly and swaying her body and limbs to the rhythm of the techno rock music. She shouted as loud as she could with the rest of the crowd whenever the DJ got another set going, the music and yelling rendering her half deaf. She grinned as the worries and concerns about life, school and Anatoly faded away. _Bozhemoi, this is _great!

Soon she found herself dancing near a tall guy, with a muscular physique. Nadia noticed his darkly handsome features as he took notice of her, and how his blue eyes lit up when he looked at her. She smiled and thought, _What the hell?_, as he turned to her and she danced with him. By the end of the set, she was impressed. _Wow, this guy can really let loose!_ Her eyes swept over him. _He's kind of cute too._

"Let me get you a drink!" he yelled to her over the noise of the crowd, and she smiled and nodded her agreement. She let him guide her through the crowd to the bar, where he managed to snag a couple of stools for them. _"Budem zdorovy!"_ he called out when they both had a shot of vodka in their hands, then they both tossed them back.

Nadia huffed out a breath as the vodka burned its way down, smiling at her drinking companion. "You dance good," she remarked, then held out a hand. "I'm Nadia. Nadia Shalenko."

The man smiled back at her as he took her hand in his, his eyes alight. "I'm Tomáš. Tomáš Brod."


End file.
